Short update

My day today was the engineering equivalent of those runs that happen only once or twice a year - you go out just planning to do a few miles, and two-thirds of the way through, you realize that it feels like you could run forever, so you do the loop once, twice more. Okay, so today wasn't exactly the engineering equivalent of feeling invicible, but I finally had one of those days where things just seem to come together and you realize that maybe you are in the right field, the right line of work. I made some very small, but important, progress on my thesis, and it helped me remember how cool the stuff is that we aerospace engineers do. One of the main reasons I went into engineering in the first place is that I fell in love with physics in high school. I was amazed by the way mathematical equations could explain why you fell to one side of the car when it goes around the corner or why you could throw a ball straight up in the air while walking and be able to catch it when it comes down instead of hearing it land with a thump behind you. One of the reasons today was so satisfying was that I could put together all these fundamental equations of spaceflight and actually see the right trajectory appear.

Also, Matlab is awesome. The people at Mathworks have thought of everything. Anything you could want to simulate/calculate/do, they've already got some command that does it.

In non-nerd-related news, I'm hoping that tomorrow is my last day of glasses. I have another eye appointment on Monday and the doc wants me to come in wearing my contacts, and since my eyes have been relatively clear for the past week, I'm going to try wearing my contacts for a few hours at a time over the weekend and see how it goes. Keep your fingers crossed...

This also might be the first night all week that I'll get 8 whole hours of sleep. Amazing!

Domestic bliss

This is the kind of man that I hope every girl is lucky enough to marry.

Summer plans

Stay tuned to see how many of these actually end up happening... but here's the list so far of things I want to do this summer with my no-homework free time:

- Volunteer at Planned Parenthood
- Work at Ben & Jerry's (just a reminder... free cone day is April 25th!)
- Take a swim class to improve my stroke from "barely-afloat dog paddle" to "freestyle"
- Run a road race
- Figure out where I want to apply for jobs next year

oh yeah, and...
- Make lots of progress on my thesis so I can graduate!

From Mom

This is such a cool idea! You can "test-drive your dream job" for just a few hundred bucks and a couple days off from your current day job.

http://vocationvacations.com/

Scared

During my four years as an undergrad, I got away with only one visit to the campus medical center. During the past month however, I've been to the med center five times. After my apparent case of pink eye cleared up, I put in my contacts for the first time in two weeks on Wednesday. I had to spend a really long time at work that day, so my contacts were in for about 15 hours. By the time I got home and was able to take them out, my eyes had gone from their pleasantly clear state from the morning back to raging red by the evening. I got worried the next day when they still didn't look better, so I called the med center to schedule an appointment with an actual opthalmologist, not just whoever drew the short straw to cover the urgent care on a Sunday afternoon. To make a long visit short, the new theory from my eye doctor is that I'm experiencing some sort of allergic reaction to my contacts or the solution. He gave me another solution to try next week after my eyes clear up (again) and I can try wearing contacts for a few hours at a time (again).

I did a little internet searching to see if this was, in fact, a "common" reaction that some contact wearers experience. I suppose it is, and according to some of these websites, it's not unusual for the allergy to develop after months or years of wearing contacts without any problems. That made me feel better until I started reading about giant papillary conjunctivitis and other more serious contact lens problems. The doctor also mentioned offhand yesterday that one alternative was to just not wear contact lenses anymore. My first reaction was, no way. The more I've thought about it over the past 24 hours, I'm absolutely convinced that there has to be another alternative - I can't not be able to wear contacts. Wearing glasses during regular life is just mildly annoying, but how am I supposed to run? How am I supposed to go rock climbing or do gymnastics or swim or go to waterparks or ride roller coasters?

I know it's a little premature to start worrying about all these things when it's entirely possible that using a different solution or wearing daily disposable contacts would fix this reaction that I'm having... but what if it doesn't? This whole thing is really scaring me.

~

And I've realized that I'm totally going to become one of those old people who can't stop talking about their back pain and artificial hip.

One more thing

I found this book in the Blackwell bookstore in Oxford last Saturday. I eventually decided not to buy it, assuming I could find it easily in the States (which, as it turns out, is not true). Flipping through the book though and reading this excerpt online is very disturbing... it's easy to avoid news headlines about Guantanamo, but stories like this can make you ashamed to be an American.

Pink eye

In case there was any doubt, pink eye sucks. Pink eye especially sucks while on vacation, and pink eye also sucks for one's friends when all one can do is complain about having pink eye! Argh... it wouldn't be so bad if I could actually see my eyes getting better, but they haven't cleared up much since Sunday when I started the antibiotics (and since Tuesday morning, when I got switched to a stronger antibiotic).

On the upside, I got to stay home from work on Monday so that I didn't infect everyone with my eyeball germs. It also left me with lots more time to finish my math project that was due today, although I think my eyes got the short end of the stick since they had to stare at Matlab all day.

Ironically, the best my eyes have looked since last Monday when I left for England was today after I went to the gym. I didn't trust myself to stay uninjured if I ran outside without my contacts, but I figured being blind on the treadmill wouldn't be too scary.

Okay, end rant.

For now.