Yesterday I biked to Salem

My cousin, her husband, and their 2 adorable kids live in Salem, and they were having a backyard party sort of thing yesterday with a bunch of their friends and their friends' kids.  I had been meaning to visit, and what better day than a day when they would feed me and I'd get to play outside with a bunch of cute kids?  Biking there was easier said than done, though.  It should have been about 18.5 miles, but considering how much I got lost, it was probably at least 20.  Every few miles, I'd have to call my fiance, tell him where I was, and ask for the next step so that I could get back onto the directions I'd written out beforehand.  I don't know if it's a Massachusetts thing or what, but there are an incredible number of intersections where none of the roads are labeled, or only one is, and you get to play the game of guessing what road you're on or crossing.  But in the end, I made it to Salem safe and sound, and just in time to put in my order for a veggie burger on their new grill :)

I hung around for the whole afternoon, including a brief rain shower.  I got to hold my 3-month-old first-cousin-once-removed for a good amount of the time, and he is so cute and snuggly!  On the down side, he did spit up on me at one point.  His older brother is 2 years old, and similarly adorable.  Unlike the stereotypical terrible twos, he was friendly, well-behaved, and excited to play with me.  I also got to see my cousins' new house, which they moved into less than 6 months ago.  It has some fun 1950's decor, which I like because I've been watching Mad Men.  Unfortunately, they don't have period furniture.  Well, one step at a time.

Getting home was much less of an adventure because I decided to take the commuter rail.  It's really convenient, even with a bike, since they have slot sorts of things to slide bikes into, and straps to secure them.

I figure this bike ride was good for me, though, since I've signed up for a triathlon that's coming up in less than 3 weeks.  I somewhat spontaneously joined the Triathlon Club here, and I've been to a couple of their swim practices now.  With my running for my half marathon in September, I should be ok to make it through a triathlon in 3 weeks, even if I don't leave my competitors in the dust.  I'm actually just planning to finish :)

On a surprising note, my research has been going a bit better lately.  In fact, we might even get to put some of it in the Science Museum!  I don't know how certain that is, so I won't describe it too much now, but I'm very excited and hopeful!

Leave me some comments if  you're still reading!  Good night!

I haven't posted in a while

It's been a while, but things are going well.  A lot has happened since I last wrote, including the end of crew and classes, the 5 Boro Bike Tour, an OK Go concert, 2 weddings, a weekend at the Cape, a trip to Vermont, and oh yeah, getting engaged!  That's right, my boyfriend (now fiance!) and I got engaged about 3 weeks ago!  We're starting to plan a wedding for next summer, and it's a lot more work than we thought it would be.  But don't worry, this isn't going to turn into a wedding blog.

I just got back from running 7 miles in preparation for the half marathon that my friend and I are doing at the end of September.  Now that crew is over, I am partly luxuriating in and partly lamenting the freedom/burden of determining my own workouts every day.  To counteract my occasional indecisiveness, I'm considering joining the triathlon team.  If you don't know me from real life, it might help to know that I've been swimming for my whole life, I bike everywhere I go, and clearly I run at least somewhat.  So triathlons are not completely out of the blue.  I went to my first triathlon swim practice yesterday, and it was a fun and interesting experience.  Unlike normal swimming, triathlon involves more than just swimming as fast as you can by yourself.  In the case of this practice, that meant practicing swimming in formation to take advantage of drafting off of other swimmers.  We also practiced coming around from behind and passing the rest of the formation.  I'd never done anything like that before, and it was fun!  I also felt hardcore when we were swimming in the diamond formation and to pass people we had to break through the front of the diamond.  So that's my athletics update.

My fiance (!) and I made blueberry muffins last night because blueberries were on an excellent sale at the grocery store (buy 1 container, get 2 free!).  They turned out delicious, even though we substituted applesauce for some of the butter. 

One of my friends offered to take engagement photos for us, so last week we went around Boston and Cambridge and took some pictures.  She's a really talented photographer, and we had a great time.  In the end, we ended up with some professional-quality shots, which you can bet will be on our wedding website!  Here's one, just for fun:

Ok, so even after all that time, I don't feel like writing any more, plus I could really use a shower after running.  I hope you enjoyed the update!

I saw Bill Gates!

On Wednesday, Bill Gates came here to give a talk called "Giving Back: Finding the Best Way to Make A Difference."  There was a lottery for tickets, and even though I never win anything, I won a ticket!  The talk was really interesting, since it addressed an issue I've been thinking about a lot lately.  Unfortunately, he didn't give any concrete suggestions for recent or upcoming graduates.  So I went up at the end for the question and answer part to try to get his advice, but there were too many people before me and the time ran out just before my turn :(  I tried to find him afterwards to ask him in person, but my search was unsuccessful.  I guess he's a pretty busy guy.

Today I babysat again for the first time in over a month.  I really missed the little boy I've been babysitting, and it was fun to see him again today and play outside together.  Speaking of kids stuff, on Friday my boyfriend and I saw the kids' movie "How to Train Your Dragon" in 3D.  It was really good!  I definitely recommend it. 

And in camera news, I ordered a new camera and the memory card arrived on Friday, but the camera hasn't arrived yet.  I am very excited to get it, though.  Hopefully it is better than the old one!  I will be relieved to have a way to take pictures again, and then I can get back to the important business of posting pictures of things I eat.  This time it's a Panasonic, so we'll see if it is better than the Sony.

Last week my boyfriend and I went out to dinner with his uncle and his uncle's girlfriend.  We went for sushi, and it was really delicious.  Also, we had a great time spending time with them and having delicious dessert afterward.  It's really fun to have people visit, even if the visits are short.  If you're thinking of coming to visit me, you should!

Academically, our lab had a dessert bake-off a couple weeks ago.  I made chocolate chip cookies, and I wish I could post a picture of them - they were very tasty!  Other competitors were super-chocolate brownies, pear and key lime pies, cookies and cream mixture, dirt (pudding with gummies and oreos), cupcakes, a Portuguese egg custard dessert, and maybe some more that I'm forgetting.  We didn't end up voting, but I'm sure that my cookies would have won.  Right?

Our last home crew race is this Saturday, and my dad is coming to watch.  Then on Sunday, we're riding in the New York City 5 Boro Bike Tour .  It should be a fun, busy weekend!  The only problem is figuring out how to get my bike to and from New York.  But I'm sure I am up to the challenge.

And that's it for tonight!

It's so windy!

We're in New Jersey now for crew, and it's so windy!  We had a really hard time getting our boat into the dock because we kept being blown off course.  We almost crashed into another boat on our way in, which was scary.  Hopefully tomorrow will be calmer, but I'm not optimistic.

Being at races makes me feel like I really need to get a new camera.  I returned the one I got not too long ago because it was so bad, but I haven't replaced it yet.  I miss taking pictures!  Especially of things I eat.  But picture this, if you can: bananas, white cheddar rice cakes, bagels with cream cheese, and clementines.  I know that wasn't 1000 words, but hopefully they were worth a small picture :)

In other exciting news, I got a share certificate, or certificate of deposit, this week.  It gets a teeny bit more interest than my savings account, so this is pretty big news.

I guess I don't have much to say if I'm talking about my share certificate, so I'll call it a night.  Keep your fingers crossed for good weather!

Today was a beautiful day!

I'm very busy with work right now, but I couldn't help commenting on what a beautiful day it was today!  The rest of the week has been and will be a pretty normal week for early April, but today it hit 90 degrees, with a lot of sun and a nice breeze.  It was perfect for taking my computer outside to do some work while sitting on a bench under a tree in a courtyard that I think of as the "Secret Garden".  It's really pretty, and I don't think many people here know it exists.  Anyway, for most of the two hours or so that I was out there, I had it all to myself.  So peaceful, and surprisingly conducive to getting work done.  I was working on figuring out which cognitive tests for executive function we're going to use, and there are more than we had originally thought.  It's probably going to come down to the Stroop test, just because we have easy access to it.  But there's another test, called the letter-number task (creative, I know), which I think might be better.  I won't bore you with the details, but I think it's a cool test.

Anyway, back to work!  We're going to New Jersey again this weekend for crew, so I won't have much time for work on the weekend.  Depending on how things go, we might have to race 4 times in 2 days! Yikes!

P.S.  I'll be happy if you leave me a comment!

Spring break

It's currently halfway through spring break, and I'm procrastinating working on my homework by writing in my blog. We're having two-a-day practices for crew, and we have our first spring race this Saturday. It will be nice because my parents are coming, and afterwards I'm going home with them. Other than that, I'm being a grad student between practices and going to bed early since I'm so tired, which is unusual for me. I'm also trying not to eat as much as I want to, since I have to make weight for crew!

This past Saturday was quite an athletic day for me, with 2 crew practices, about 45 minutes of bike riding, and about an hour of tennis. Needless to say, I slept well that night! I feel very hardcore for having so many practices.

Tomorrow we have a meeting with the people from the hospital side of our study, who are responsible for the sleep side of things. They're really nice people, and their areas of expertise are very different from ours. It's interesting to work with them. I've prepared a spreadsheet of some cognitive tests and robotics tasks that I think would be good to have our subjects do. Depending on what happens tomorrow, we might have a lot of coding in our futures!

Next week will be back to classes, but it's about halfway through the semester already. Put another way, we're only halfway through the semester?! Sometimes it feels one way, sometimes the other. But I'm very much looking forward to warmer weather, and summer especially. I haven't been in Boston for the summer since the summer after my freshman year, and I'm excited. It is a much more friendly place when everything's green and the weather is warm.

Ok, maybe I should work on my homework now. Wish me luck!

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!