"Never updating slacker"

Yes Sarah, I do fall into that category! Needless to say, it's been quite a while since I updated, and I'm wondering whether it's worth it at all to keep posting here. Anyway, I'll spare you the details, but don't be surprised if this site dies out after a while...

This morning I walked past the main entrance to MIT on my way to work. I passed TIM the Beaver, MIT's mascot (think: beaver = nature's engineer), and he and a few other people were handing out candy and wishing passers-by a happy Halloween. It was great! Somehow it made my morning to get a cheerful greeting and a mini Snickers bar from a complete stranger in a $7,000 furry beaver costume.

Last night after dropping Josh off at the airport, I stopped at Shaw's on my way home to pick up some groceries. I didn't really mean to, but I got on an E train going back from the airport, so I figured I may as well stop at the grocery store since I'd have to walk home from around there anyway. So I get my few things and start walking back to my apartment.... right after I turned onto my street, I heard in a low voice, "Hey, how's it going." I turned to my right to see a man standing between two parked cars on the side of the street. I mutter, "Fine," out of habit and surprise and keep walking quickly, but I noticed as I passed the guy that he had his pants open and his hands were, um... busy. I couldn't tell if he was peeing or doing something else unmentionable. I must have given him a surprised/weirded out look though, because as I turned back around and continued walking, he called out, "Don't hate me!"

I guess I'll have to work on my poker face for public urination.


P.S. My second photo was published in the Tech on Friday!

On my way home

Storrow Drive, from the Harvard Bridge

Mass Ave, a couple blocks from my apartment

A basement bar

Neighborhood stats

In searching for a weather website that would tell me when the rain in Boston will end, I stumbled upon this website that shows all sorts of details about any neighborhood in the U.S. Demographics, income level, ethnicity, education level, climate, even the "poisonous brown gases" index. Definitely useful if you're investigating a new neighborhood to move to... also fun for spying on your neighbors. :)

For more miscellaneous internet entertainment, type "failure" into google and see what comes up as the first hit.

Travel to...

...the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Africa...

Start here: http://www.photobloggies.org

:)

A happier time

On the road to Seattle, back in June.

Just reliving a good memory.

Sorority Life

A friend of mine is living with his girlfriend for a few months between when his lease ended and when he moves across the country to start a new job. His girlfriend, however, lives in a sorority house. As a former resident of that same house, I found his AIM profile particularly funny:

[sorority life]

things learned while living in a sorority:
#1: clothing is always optional.
#2: if you must wear something, pick either underwear or outerwear, never both.
#3: it's hard to win a naked pillowfight while wearing clothes.
#4: blasting songs from gwen stefani's solo album is always encouraged.
#5: if you've lost your sex and the city/orange county/friends dvds, no worries, at least 14 of your sisters own these classic collections as well.
#6: it's perfectly acceptable for 2 girls to spoon for hours on end; it is not acceptable to call this "hot girl-on-girl action."
#7: placing a "because i have a penis and you don't" sticker on your door is typically frowned upon.

Rock on.

1 down, 5 to go...

Yes, I took my first exam as a graduate student today. Astrodynamics, exam 1, actually didn't go too badly. And now that my major hurdle of the week out of the way, I can focus on more fun things: shooting the women's field hockey game tonight, watching trashy TV tomorrow night, not going to work on Friday because the building is closed, and having a fantastic four-day weekend.

Since I haven't taken any actual pictures of my own recently, I'll leave you with this one:

Published!

For better or worse, my picture from the volleyball game was printed in the Tech on Friday. The picture was the best out of a crappy bunch, so I'm not posting it here. But it was still cool to see my name printed under the photo.

Life here seems to have gotten much busier over the past couple of weeks, mainly because I actually have work to do at work now, instead of being able to just check my email and do my homework. Eventually, I'm supposed to be doing error analysis of the navigation system on a missile, but for right now, I'm just reading and becoming thoroughly confused about discrete Kalman filters. Classes are okay... astrodynamics is cool, especially since Battin is teaching it - life is never dull with an 82 year old professor. Stochastic Estimation & Control sucks, but hopefully it'll help me out a lot with the work that I'll be doing at Draper.

Yesterday LeeAnn and I went to Starbucks and worked on homework. LeeAnn is a friend of mine from undergrad who just finished a year in AmeriCorps and is now starting law school in Boston. After three and a half hours at Starbucks, we both reeked of coffee, but I got a lot of homework done. Plus, I've now learned that I don't want to go to law school, which is one more thing to cross off the list of "things to be when I grow up" ... only 1,123,874 left to go.

On Friday I went to a housewarming party for a friend of a friend. It was actually a lot of fun, considering that I knew only two people there. The hosts were a couple of Irishmen and an Incan. Ahh... accents.

Today is shaping up to be a regular ol' student Sunday: heading over to the Z Center this morning to lift, back home to shower, eat, and do homework until 6pm, when I have to be back on campus for the Tech meeting. Free dinner, photo assignment for next week, then back home to do more studying for my exam on Wednesday. But next week will be a short week because work is closed on Friday (something to do with the A/C repair...?) and it'll be a long weekend since next Monday is Columbus Day. Plus, I'm looking forward to the General visiting. :)