On to the more mundane things in life...

Hmm... what's been going on lately? Work has been going better - I have some more direction on what I should be doing and accomplishing it is slow, but not as painful as I thought it would be. IAP (Independent Activities Period, our January term off) has been great - no homework to do at night or on the weekends. The only annoying part is that it seems like everyone at MIT has decided that now is when they're going to start their New Year's resolution of working out regularly, so the gym is always crowded. However, since the weather's been freakishly warm lately, I've been able to run outside more often, thereby avoiding the smelly crowds at the Z Center.

Phil, Glenn and I tried to go to Friday's for dinner last night in an attempt to get the three of us together in one room one last time before Phil graduates, but Friday's was closed! As in, permanently (at least for the Newbury Street location). And just when they brought back the 3 course menu that we had been imagining (with drool) the entire afternoon... We ended up at Pizzeria Uno's instead, and I resisted getting the deep dish pizza since I imagine I'll have it at least once in Chicago this weekend, but hopefully not at Uno's. Anyway, it wasn't a bad substitute, but I regretted eating my leftovers for lunch today... my stomach's been complaining all afternoon.

Continuing with the food theme, I cooked! Definitely not the first occasion, but a rare one. I'm more of a baker - I can cook you a pie or some brownies, but getting a real dinner together (i.e. anything fancier than boiling pasta or scrambling eggs) is much more effort than I'm willing to put forth on a regular basis. But there's more time on the weekends and I had just gotten back from the grocery store on Monday evening, so I made pizza casserole from a recipe that I found online. It's pretty foolproof, and admittedly not anything gourmet, but I'm still eating the leftovers, so that's a good sign.

IAP also affords me free time to read something other than textbooks, so I got several books out of the library and have been reading those in addition to a couple that I got for Christmas. So my goal is to finish the following books before February 7th (the beginning of spring term, when it's back to reading about Fourier transforms and symplectic matrices):

1. It's Not About the Bike, by Lance Armstrong (done)
2. Tales of a Female Nomad, by Rita Golden Gelman
3. The Unsavvy Traveler: Women's Comic Tales of Catastrophe
4. Under the Tuscan Sun, by Frances Mayes
5. There Are No Children Here, by Alex Kotlowitz
6. Every Second Counts, by Lance Armstrong

I should also catch up on my issues of National Geographic... And now that you're thoroughly bored with my life, I'll get back to said reading.