My house has a new driveway

My house at home got a new driveway, and we held an opening ceremony when I was home for Thanksgiving.  Here it is, in all its glory:

I'll miss the old one, but the new one is very nice and smooth, as you can see.

I haven't been posting as much lately, which is because I've been very busy.  Lately, I've completed a couple of 2-day courses in bike mechanics.  I've done things like change my brake pads, adjust my derailleur, re-tape my handlebars, degrease and re-lube my chains, and watch a whole bike being built from just a frame.  It's been pretty cool, and I know a lot more about bikes now.

I've also started writing the background section of my thesis, which is hard to do.  It's hard to get started, it's hard to know what to write, it's hard to do all the research that is necessary, and so on.  But I've got some done now, and I'll keep going.  My advisor wants to see a preliminary version by Friday, so I've got a deadline.

Planning a wedding is similarly a lot of work.  Little by little, we're making progress.  From where we are now, it's hard to see how we'll get it all done, but I'm sure we will.

It looks like it's going to be a snow day tomorrow, with Boston getting 12-18 inches of snow, so I'm not going in to work and I'm going to stay home and stay warm!

Happy New Year!

Mmmmm...

My mom wanted me to put up a new post, so here goes.  Don't these cinnamon buns look delicious?

Merry Christmas, and I'll post more soon, I promise!

Apples and visits and games, oh my!

So we took some pictures of our apples when we got home from apple-picking, but it wasn't immediately after (there might or might not have been a pie made in the meantime...).  Anyway, we wanted to take a picture that looked like as many apples as we had originally picked, but with the number of apples that we had left.  Here is the amount of apples we had left:

Here's how we tried to make it look like more apples.  I would say it worked:

We had some friends over for a game night, during which we played 2 new games: Ticket to Ride, which we bought, and Dominion, which some friends brought.  Both of them were really fun!  Now I want to get Dominion, but I think we're going to put it on our wedding registry :)

Here's our feast from game night:

Note the apples that are pink on the inside!  How cool is that?  They taste pretty good, too (and that's coming from someone who doesn't really like apples):

We also had a visit from some of my fiance's family last weekend, which was nice.  We got to play with his cousin's kids, who are 1 and 3, so it was really cute.  We took them to the Boston Children's Museum, which is a great museum if you're ever in Boston with kids.  It's also pretty fun for adults!

We're having another game night tonight, but this one's not at our apartment.  We're about to head out for that, so I'll write more later!

Here's another thing I did

Pretty cool, huh?  I am sometimes scared of heights, particularly when it involves climbing things, but this was totally worth it!

We went apple-picking today

I went apple-picking today for the first time ever, if you can believe that.  It was much more fun than I thought it was going to be, despite the unfortunately cold temperatures.  I went with 7 of my friends, and after a morning of picking all different kinds of apples and testing some out to make sure we liked them, we had a delicious picnic.  On the drive back, I fell asleep in the car :)

Here are some apples from the orchard where we went today:

That's all for now, just a short update because I figure that's better than nothing, and I don't have time for a long post.

My 10th Veg-iversary

My next few posts might be a little out of order, time-wise, but this is the order I feel like writing about things in, so hopefully you'll bear with me.

This past weekend I marked the 10th anniversary of my becoming a vegetarian by having a vegetarian potluck picnic out in a plaza by our apartment.  Here are the stars of the show:

Israeli salad (cucumbers, tomatoes, red peppers, and parsley).

Fruit salad (kiwis, pineapple, grapes, and nectarines).

Caprese salad (tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil, drizzled with balsamic glaze).

 Guacamole.

Banana bread.

Zucchini cakes.

Key lime cookies.

Pasta salad number 1.

Quinoa salad with tomatoes.

French bread and cheese.

Bruschetta ingredients.

Pasta salad number 2.

Peanut butter chocolate ice cream.

It was great to have my friends celebrate with me and eat so much delicious food.  It made me want to have a veg-iversary every year!

Half marathon training is going well.  Yesterday my best friend and I ran 11.5 miles, which was a distance record for both of us.  We won't run that much again until the actual half marathon, which is in less than 2 weeks!  I got a blister on my toe, but other than that the run was really successful.  We ran along the Emerald Necklace, which is a string of pretty green areas with nice trails to run on.  We ran all the way from the beginning to Jamaica Pond and back.  The weather was perfect for running, and we were really proud of ourselves.  I'm excited for the half marathon!

Classes have started again, and so far, mostly so good.  I'm really excited about a couple of them, and I think I'm going to learn a lot of new things.  This is the first time I've ever taken any sort of economics, and the class I'm taking is not introductory level.  It should be a good challenge!

I'm going to go do laundry now.  I really need to get more running shorts.  Actually, I guess sooner than I'd like it will be pants season :(

Continuing with the updates

I left off with my family vacation in Maine at the beginning of August.  This post has a lot of pictures, since I really enjoy taking pictures in Maine.  This is the house we were staying in:

We've gone to Maine every year, but this was the first time we'd stayed in this cottage.  It was nice, and it had a great view.  My dad really liked how the trees framed the view from the front porch:

Check out that sunset!  Also, check out this delicious pizza, with Maine blueberries, gorgonzola cheese, and walnuts on the side.  Probably this is the most delicious pizza in the world:

We got this pizza for me and my fiance, and we went with my parents to a lobster place so that they could get lobster.  We ate our food in the lobster dining area, and it had this beautiful view:

Also, my dad and I did our annual kayak race.  Here's a picture of us practicing for it earlier in the week:

Don't we look cool?  The race went well.  We got 18th place out of more than 30 boats, with no serious mishaps.  Overall, Maine was great.  My parents, brother, and I were there for the first part of the week, then our family friend came up from Boston for a day, and then my brother went home and my fiance came up for the weekend.  We had a lot of ice cream, went to a movie, took some relaxing naps, and read books on the porch.

I'm still very excited about my new bike.  And now I'm going to babysit, so I'll continue with this later.  Have a good day!