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!