More Chicago pictures

Josh took way more pictures than I did on our trip, and his camera is definitely snazzier than mine (and of course, his good pictures wouldn't have anything to do with the operator.... :) )

A cooler shot of the water tower:
On Saturday afternoon, I dragged Josh into both the Hershey's store and the Ghirardelli store. The stores were right next to each other on our way to the L station, and the scent of chocolate was much too powerful for me at snack o'clock. We discovered that the delicious aroma was coming from inside Ghirardelli, but the better snacks were at Hershey's. So, I decided to get a cupcake... the largest cupcake I've ever seen.
Later that day, we stopped at Millenium Park and saw this shiny bean-shaped statue (that I'm sure has a more appropriate name than "shiny bean"). It gives a cool warped view of the skyline.
We got a little closer to the bean to see our squashed selves reflected in the mirror:
We saw this collection of flags at the end of Navy Pier. Actually, we saw this collection all over the city, but we couldn't figure out what the flag on the right is. City flag? Our-place-is-3-times-better-than-your-place flag? It's not the Illinois flag, because that one's on the left.

Blizzard

Well, I'm not sure I'd call the snowstorm that's hit the Northeast over the past 24 hours a "blizzard," but it's definitely been a storm. I slept through most of it, going to bed around 2am last night and not waking up until noon (hey, what are weekends for?), but we're still under a blizzard warning while the snow continues to fall this afternoon. I went outside to take the trash out and promptly buried my right calf in the snow, trying to hold the door open. After changing into more snow-friendly clothes, I went outside again to see what everything outside the alley looked like (the window in my room only offers me a view of the shaft of the building).

Here's the view from the front steps of my apartment building:
Looking down Marlborough street:
Marlboro Market is the liquor store kitty-corner from our building... also the cheapest place around to buy milk. You can see it off in the distance on the left.
The corner of Mass Ave and Beacon. This intersection is usually awfully crowded, but everything is eerily quiet today.
Apparently there's been enough traffic in and out of our building today to keep a footprint path cleared on the front steps.

Ironically, the moment I stepped outside my apartment, I saw the #1 bus stopped at the corner of Mass Ave & Marlborough. Apparently you can wait for hours in perfectly good weather for the bus, but as soon as the weather sucks, hey! There's the bus. I also saw a guy trekking down Mass Ave, in the street, wearing snowshoes. Another couple I passed was on their way home from Whole Foods, braving the stinging wind and flying snow with yellow ski goggles. It's amazing what you can see when you're out for only ten minutes.

I don't think I'm going to make it to the Tech meeting tonight.

My friends at 78

Compliments of Robin Riedel. :)

Bye, Natalya

My little hamster died yesterday. Some of you may remember that I originally had two hamsters, and although one died very early on, the other one lived happily for over a year - in multiple homes and states, and throughout a very long roadtrip in a rental truck. She was a trooper, and whatever your personal feelings may be on the rewards of having a pet hamster instead of an animal with more personality, it feels like a little piece of me is now missing. I spent an entire year unconscious of the fact that the first thing I did whenever I got home was peek into Natalya's cage to see how she was doing, and now it's hard to look past my desk into a big empty aquarium with no hamster.

Natalya was never a big fan of the camera, but I'm glad I got a few shots of her over the past year.

Travel ideas?

Just in case you need some help brainstorming places to go this year. :)

The Destinations of 2006

Chicago weekend

Ahh, vacation. Josh and I had a fantastic time in Chicago, although two and a half days is definitely not enough time to see everything there is to see. In sifting through my pictures, it looks like I only took photos from the John Hancock Center, both when we were there during the day and when we stopped by the Signature Lounge later at night for drinks. I guess that means I still need to steal some of Josh's pictures. :)

In any case, here are a few of my favorites:

Josh in the Hancock Observatory

Chicago skyline from the Shedd Aquarium

Lakeshore Drive, seen from the Hancock Center

The only decent night shot I got from the Hancock

The old water tower, one of the few buildings that survived the Great Chicago Fire

A psychedelic shot from the Signature Lounge

More to come later...

19+ = genius

This is obviously bogus, but my officemate found this Mensa test online, so we spent several minutes at lunch trying to beat each other. Your hints are:

• Think sports
• Think British
• Think Bible

Have fun! =)

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.

24 reality

The new season of 24 started on Sunday, and I couldn't be more excited. Jack is back, Chloe's still hilariously weird, and the edge-of-your-seat storyline makes up for the occasional bad acting and/or completely implausible subplot. Anyway, I turned on my computer tonight after coming back from dinner with my roommates, and I saw that the top story is an update on a female journalist in Iraq who's been captured; her kidnappers are threatening to kill her in 72 hours if the U.S. doesn't release all female Iraqi prisoners. This is only one in a long line of journalists who have been captured during times of war, but I guess Jill's story hit a little closer to home - she's 28, a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, has written for the Boston Globe and the Christian Science Monitor (a nonreligious newspaper based in Boston), and grew up in Ann Arbor.

I suppose it sounds childish, but why aren't there any rules in international conflicts? On 24, even if the situation looks hopeless, you always know that eventually Jack Bauer will save the day, even if he's currently unconscious, wounded, and been abandoned by the U.S. government. But in the uglier world of real life, who saves an innocent woman like Jill Carroll? Journalists and the media, however often we give them a bad rap for slanted reporting, are the only windows we as the general public have on events happening around the world. No one can understand, sympathize, or change what's going on in Iraq without journalists abroad to show us the reality of the situation.

As much as there are international regulations for war, what's to stop it from becoming "by whatever means necessary"? Jill can be used as leverage, so it's done. Maybe there aren't a lot of innocent targets to choose from, but it just seems like whatever organization has captured her is shooting itself in the foot - without the media, the public has no way of knowing the truth of the situation and subsequently applying pressure to the government to change the status quo.

Sometimes it's hard to distance myself from what's going on when I watch 24 - on Monday I was imagining myself in the shoes of those hostages that were dragged in front of the video camera and then executed. What would I be thinking? What would I say? Would I be calm or hysterical? Would I pass out from sheer terror? The only way I can watch those scenes is to remember that it's all made up by TV writers - until a story like this shows up in the news. Those scenes are this woman's reality.

Chicago, here we come!

Josh and I are going to Chicago next weekend! We just bought tickets this afternoon for three days of blissful vacation. I spent the first 9 years of my life in the 'burbs of the Windy City, but I don't remember much about going downtown other than the fact that I loved the Museum of Science & Industry as a kid, the Aquarium stunk of fish, and my parents loathed the traffic. Hopefully, we can take public transportation everywhere this time... But I'm taking suggestions for places to visit, eat, and stay!

Beauty and the Geek

Overheard at the Tech meeting on Monday night:

Photo editor: "All right, the next news item is.... Beauty and the Geek? I'm not sure what that's about..."
A female photographer: "Oh! There's an MIT grad who's going to be on this season of the show."
Photo editor: "Oh okay... does anyone know who it is?"
Another female photographer: "And is it a girl or a guy?"
A male photographer: "Oh, it's a guy. The girls are supposed to be beautiful."

It took this guy a full 15 seconds before realizing that he had just insulted the entire female population at MIT.

10 Layers of Me

This is shamelessly stolen from my little sister, but I don't have anything else more interesting to write about, and I'm trying to write in my blog more, so...

Layer 1: On the Outside
Name: Melanie
Birth place: Ypsilanti, MI (pronounced "ip-seh-LAN-tee")
Birth date: February 25, 1982
Current location: Boston, Mass.
Eye color: Blue or green, depending on what color shirt I'm wearing
Hair color: Sandy blond (calling it dirty blond puts you on my hit list)
Righty or Lefty: Righty in writing, lefty in gymnastics and card-dealing
Zodiac sign: Uh... I guess should know this, but I don't. Oh! Pisces. How dumb. Somehow I think Chinese fortune-cookie fortunes are fun, but horoscopes seem ridiculous.

Layer 2: On the Inside
Your heritage: English, German... your basic Euro mutt
What shoes did you wear today: An old pair of running shoes
Your weakness: Movie theater popcorn (read: obscene amounts of butter), ice cream, Sex and the City re-runs
Your fears: Death, childbirth, eye injuries
Your perfect pizza: Augh, there are so many choices! But I think I'd have to go with Pizza Hut's stuffed crust, topped with pepperoni and extra cheese.
Goal you'd like to achieve: Marry the love of my life, have a job that I look forward to going to everyday, see absolutely as much of the world as possible

Layer 3: Yesterday
Your first thoughts waking up: Trying to remember a very strange dream I had involving... being at camp? I think...?
Your best physical feature: I think I have nice feet.
Your bedtime: Yesterday? About 12:45am. I'm usually up a little too late yapping on the phone with Josh.
Your most missed memory: Missed? I'm not quite sure how to interpret this one. I'll go with a time that I would love to revisit right now - it's a toss-up between my trip to Vegas last February or the roadtrip from Houston to Seattle this past summer.

Layer 4: Your Pick
Pepsi or Coke: Coke
McDonald's or Burger King: McDonald's
Single or group dates: 9 times out of 10 I would pick single, but sometimes a group get-together that's a bunch of couples is a lot of fun.
Adidas or Nike: I can only run in Asics.
Lipton tea or Nestea: Who cares?
Chocolate or vanilla: About once a year, I'll get a vanilla shake at McDonald's. Every other time, the answer's chocolate.
Cappuccino or coffee: Coffee, but only if there's lots of cream and sugar.

Layer 5: Do You/Are You?
Smoke: No
Cuss: Trying to quit
Single: Nope
Take a shower: Yes. I once had wrist surgery and had to take baths instead for six weeks - it was awful.
Have a crush(es): Sorry babe, but if I ever met Johnny Depp, I would have to give him one loooong kiss.
Think you've been in love: I'm sure.
Liked high school: My memories of high school are a little rosier than the entire four years were, but yes.
Do you believe in yourself: Yes. But don't ask during finals week.
Get motion sickness: Sometimes. It usually involves roller coasters or airplane turbulence.
Think you're a health freak: Who voluntarily labels themself a freak? I run about 15 miles a week, lift weights, and watch what I eat (mostly). For a rebuttal, see items 1 & 2 under "weaknesses."
Get along with your parents: Yup

Layer 6: In the Past Month
Drank alcohol: Yup
Gone out on a date: Yup
Gone to the mall: Yup
Eaten sushi: Definitely not. The smell and taste of fish makes me nauseous, so sushi isn't something I eat.
Been dumped: No
Gone skating: No
Gone skinny dipping: Nope
Dyed your hair: Nope
These questions would be a lot more revealing if they weren't restricted to just the past month...

Layer 7: Have You Ever
Played a game that required removal of clothing: No, but I once went to an underwear party...
Changed who you were to fit in: Unfortunately, yes. Anyone who tries to tell you they didn't obviously never went to middle school.

Layer 8: Getting Older
Age you hope to be married: Whenever I'm ready
Number of children: Not sure I want them
Describe your dream wedding: The only things I'm sure of are that I want my immediate family there and I want my grandfather to play the organ. Everything else is negotiable.

Layer 9: In a Girl/Guy
Best eye color: Deep blues and greens are very striking, but I'm also partial to very dark browns. :)
Best hair color: Anything natural
Short or long hair: Short
Height: Taller than me, but not more than about a head taller
Type of clothing: I'd veto goth and Steve Urkel attire, but most everything else in between is fine by me.

Layer 10: In the Numbers
Number of people I can trust: A number I'm comfortable with
Number of CD's I own: I dunno... maybe 100?
Number of piercings: One in each ear. Not interested in additional ones.
Number of tattoos: None. Not interested. (Exception: If I ever participated in the Olympics, I would get the Olympic rings tattooed on my ankle.)
Number of times I've been on TV: None that I know of, but I would love to be on TV someday.
Number of times my name has appeared in the newspaper: Several times, but just in the local papers when I was in high school sports. Oh, and I guess in a handful of photo credits in The Tech.
Number of scars on my body: My body's pretty good at healing scars, but there are two that I'll be stuck with forever: the scar on my right wrist from getting a ganglion cyst removed, and the scar on my forehead from its collision with the wooden armrest on our couch during a rowdy game of Ring Around the Rosy.
Number of big things in my past that I regret: I try to live my life so that I have no regrets. There is one thing... but it's shaped my life in so many ways that I can't imagine where I'd be if I could go back and change it. And I like my life now, who and where I am, so maybe it's not a regret.

Honesty

Yesterday I walked to the Boston Public Library to get a new library card and check out some books. I was browsing through the new books section, which is located around a bunch of tables where people can sit and read, when I overheard two guys talking to each other in voices a little louder than is probably appropriate for the library. While a few of us in the room probably grumbled internally about it, one woman, several tables over, stood up and shouted, "It'd be nice if you would shut the hell up so people can read!"

Ah, honesty. It's something that seems to get lost when people are separated by the walls of their cars and yards, but in my limited experience, it's more alive in a city like Boston where people are crowded together by the shared experience of public transportation and walking; a place where you can never be completely alone. Later, after I left the library and was back to walking the crowded streets in Back Bay, I passed a man who glanced over at me and said, "I like your hair." I rolled my eyes in a reflex reaction, but then I realized it wasn't a come-on or a fake compliment followed by, "spare some change?" Just plain words.

Often people say that residents of big cities are rude or unfriendly - they don't look at you when you pass them on the street, much less offer any kind of greeting. People in customer service-type jobs here are also less likely to give you a bright smile when you approach the register or ask a question. Yes, there are a few that are rude, but the majority are just being honest in their attitude - no fake enthusiasm.

It's funny how you can feel totally alone in a place where you're completely surrounded by people. Everyone's doing their own thing, living their own life; there's no need to interact with the strangers you encounter every day. But I think there's still a sense of comraderie - we're doing everything separately, but there are still those moments when you laugh with a complete stranger on the subway or when someone hands you the dollar bill that you just dropped on the street, and the conversation somehow seems more intimate, as though without all the normal small talk or big smile, you're getting a better glimpse of who that person actually is.

Mid-lane collision

During my run yesterday afternoon, I was on a treadmill overlooking the pool in the Z Center. The middle lane had three or four people in it, and they were circle swimming, meaning that instead of splitting the lane in half and staying on one side, everyone swam laps counterclockwise, swimming down on one side of the lane and back on the other.

That is, everyone except one guy. This dude, in flippers, either didn't know that everyone else in his lane was circle swimming, or maybe he had pulled out to the left to pass someone else...? In any case, he was splashing along, completely unaware that he was headed directly toward another swimmer in the left side of the lane. They were both doing the freestyle, so they were only looking sideways instead of in front of themselves.

I could see how this was going to end when they were still 25 meters apart. Yup - they got closer and closer and then - boom! Both reached out for another stroke, whacked each other on the shoulders, and bonked heads. Flipper guy popped up and looked utterly confused, but the other guy just looked mad. They seemed to exchange a few words, then the mad guy plowed on and the flipper guy swam hurriedly into the right side of the lane. Once he reached the end, he got out, seemingly too embarrassed to keep swimming.

I know this must have been painful and frustrating for the two swimmers, but for us upstairs, it was kind of like watching an episode of America's Funniest Home Videos.

Happy new year!

Wow, it's finally 2006. My guess is that it'll take me at least two months before I stop writing 2005 on all my checks.

I had a fantastic break this year. Spent 10 days at home in Michigan, then came back to Boston on the 29th to celebrate New Year's with Josh. We didn't really make any plans to do anything special for New Year's Eve, but after looking around online to see what Beantown does to celebrate, we discovered First Night, which is basically a day-long event with a bunch of art displays, concerts, museum exhibits, puppet shows, etc. all around Boston. We made it to a few of the evening events, mainly admiring ice sculptures in Boston Commons and Copley Square.



This one is a sculpture of the number 30, not of "BO" (just in case you were wondering, like a few of people out that night). Anyway, there were some local TV personalities broadcasting live from Copley, so we stayed there for the big countdown. The whole thing was a lot of fun - you could tell that Boston was making a real effort to offer a family event; otherwise the city would have turned into pool of drunk twenty-somethings running around and screaming at midnight. However, amidst all the ridiculous hats and assorted junk food, street vendors were also selling these long horns that were like plastic versions of those long bugels you see in any Disney movie featuring a princess. Motivated, I suppose, by the same force that persuades people to wear oversized clown hats and giant 2006 glasses covered in glitter, a ton of people bought these horns. And they were really loud, like a horribly disorganized and out-of-tune orchestra of car horns.

But I digress. New Year's was a blast. :) Oh, and on the way out of the throngs of people in Copley Square after midnight, we passed a couple that had just gotten engaged!

So now it's back to real life... Josh has gone home, and I'm back to going to work every day. But at least classes won't start for another month. :)

welcome to bat country

Woo-hoo! Brian's site is back up. Let the online stalking resume. :)

Today is creeping along pathetically slowly. I'm waiting for a guy at work to send me some necessary inputs to my code, and I've done just about as much of the editing / commenting / cleanup as I can without actually changing any of the math, so I am now quite bored. My homework is (mostly) done, so the only productive thing left to do is read for my classes. Oh, the excitement.

Is it Wednesday yet??

Black and white

Carlos and I went to the Ansel Adams exhibit at the MFA last week, and I was inspired to poke through some old photos I've taken that I photoshopped into black and white.

Snow Lake, Washington

Smith Tower, Seattle, WA

I like turning some of my pictures into black & whites because, for one, I don't think my camera captures colors as well as it used to (or maybe I've just gotten pickier), and also because it somehow makes my pictures seem more like "real photographs" instead of just snapshots. I don't think I have the eye or the energy to ever become a serious amateur photographer, but I like being pleasantly surprised every now and then when I get one that turns out okay.

Today has been a lesson in "how to procrastinate from doing homework." Step 1? Stay out way too late the night before, and consequently, wake up at noon. Shower, eat breakfast, laugh with roommates and out of town houseguests about the previous night's barcrawl, talk on the phone for a couple hours, go out shopping for a friend's birthday gift, then come home and prolong eating dinner/watching TV until the only choices left are Entertainment Tonight or reruns of Friends that you've already seen four times. Then, think about doing homework, but convince yourself that you won't really get anything accomplished between now and aforementioned friend's birthday party, so it's really not worth it to get started.

~sigh~

I think writing about this has made me feel guilty, so I guess it's time to get started.

Sunday blues

Yet again, I've been facing the Sunday blues today... I don't want to go back to work tomorrow, I'm not smart enough to finish my homework by myself, I don't feel prepared for my test this week (which I really need to pull up my grade in that class), and there's been some other personal stuff going on this weekend that's been on my mind.

I wasn't really looking forward to go to the Tech meeting tonight because I still don't really know many people there, so socializing is still an effort, and I don't feel like I have much time this week to dedicate to photo assignments. At the beginning of every meeting, we go through the "mocks" (the previous week's issues of the paper) and critique the photos, and I wasn't really looking forward to that because I wasn't very happy with my most recent photo in the paper (it was posed, not very exciting composition, etc.), so I was extremely surprised to get some nice comments from the other photographers there. It was a very well-timed ego boost. :)

The earlier part of the weekend was a lot more fun - I saw Jarhead on Friday night with the regular collection of roommates and their significant others, and then last night I saw The Squid and the Whale with a friend of mine from high school (plus roommate) who's currently living in Boston, working on her master's degree in children's literature. We hung out for a while at her place after the movie, just catching up on the high school gossip that we knew. The only problem was that we both have the same gossip source, so I'm not sure that either of us really learned anything new... It came up that another girl from our graduating class is trying to put together an informal five-year reunion this Thanksgiving though, and neither of us are really interested in going. We want to know about all of the crazy things that people from our class are up to (which, at this point, mostly means getting married to other people from high school and having kids, although not necessarily in that order), but we don't really want to actually talk to them... A newsletter would be much better!

It's interesting for me to remember who I thought I would keep in touch with after graduation and then compare that list to who I actually keep in touch with now. The number is about the same as what I thought it would be, but the people aren't. It's a little unsettling to realize that the same thing will inevitably happen with some of my current friendships.

TV and Veteran's Day

Last night I watched 3.5 hours of TV. Three and a half! It started out gloriously, but by the time I went to bed, I felt sort of disoriented and had a bit of a headache. Oh well... In case you did not watch TV until your eyeballs fell out last night, here's how it went: teen angst on the OC continues as usual, more people got fired on The Apprentice, and more people died on ER. At least I got some emails written and other miscellaneous things accomplished while I was parked in front of the tube... having a laptop is nice.

I'm mildly annoyed that I had to come to work today. It seems everyone in the world has Veteran's Day off, except us. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but it's a federal holiday! I guess this is one of those reasons that people work for the government...

At the gym

After work this afternoon, I went to the Z Center for some much-needed running and lifting. As I was walking into the main part of the gym, a couple of guys stopped me to pitch their "Bike for Charity" program. All I had to do as a volunteer was bike for 10 minutes, and for every mile I biked, they would donate $1 to the charity and pay me $1. It seemed like a reasonable offer (although I couldn't imagine I could bike a respectable number of miles in only 10 minutes), except when I asked about the charities that would receive the money. The guy told me he would roll a 4-sided die (do these exist?) and the number that came up would dictate which charity would get the money. I was still on board at this point, until he showed me the list and I saw that the last charity was the NRA. I am not interested in raising money for Charlton Heston and the National Rifle Association. However, I also wasn't interested in confronting this guy about it, so I begged off by explaining that I had just signed up for a treadmill slot. It's a very handy excuse actually - I used it to get out of filling out some sophomore's survey a couple weeks ago. I dunno... I'm not opposed to raising money for charitable causes or participating in a survey that could improve the athletic facilities at MIT, but whatever happened to just being able to go to the gym to work out?

Rate My Life

Inspired by Becca and some passing boredom at work, I took a quiz to rate my life:

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	7.4
Mind:	6.2
Body:	6.8
Spirit:	5.9
Friends/Family:	6.8
Love:	7.7
Finance:	7.7
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

Apparently my spiritual life is lacking.

Saturday

Yesterday I was supposed to shoot photos at the MIT sailing race on the Charles River. It ended up getting cancelled because there wasn't enough wind to actually sail, but I had some fun taking random photos while waiting for the wind to pick up.





I got some other shots of womens crew practice earlier that morning, but I downloaded them at the Tech office, so I'll have to post them later.

The rest of the afternoon yesterday didn't involve anything really exciting... I finished my astrodynamics take-home test, cleaned my hamster's cage, vacuumed, Swiffered, and went grocery shopping. Later that night, I went out with the roomies (plus Kartik, plus assorted girlfriends) to Pourhouse for dinner, a bar that is well-known for really only one thing: half-off burger night on Saturdays. Their burgers are between $4 and $5, so Saturday nights mean you can get a burger and fries for less than a Coke. The food isn't fantastic, but it's hard to complain when you can pay for dinner with the change you find in the couch. Needless to say, in a college town, the line to wait for a table on Saturday nights is very long.

Afterward, Phil and I went down the street to Cactus Club. Soon after Glenn met up with us again, I left to go find the restroom, and when I came back, I found both my non-single roommates chatting with a couple of flirty girls, so after several minutes of feeling like the fifth wheel, I decided to go home. I was exhausted anyway and didn't really feel like having more to drink, so I was ready to call it a night. I felt awfully lame though when I glanced at my watch on the walk home and saw that it was only 11:00...

gobble, gobble, boggle

Got my ticket to go to Houston for Thanksgiving... is anyone staying in town?? :)

The tall and short of it

Last night I went out running for the first time in a week. I did one of my regular loops around the Charles River, and on my way across the BU Bridge, I passed a hand-holding couple that must have had at least a 30-inch difference in height. I think it was the dude who was ridiculously tall, and the girl was just regularly Asian-sized, but it was hard to tell since there weren't any other normal people around to provide a reference. But seriously, she barely made past his elbow. The logistics of how they work together are just mind-boggling, sort of like when you see extremely overweight couples together, or hear those stories on 20/20 about adult conjoined twins that share one digestive tract and are both married.

How do they do that?!?

"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. :)

Photo newbie

Today I had my first assignment as a photographer for the Tech - shooting photos of the women's volleyball game. The camera that I got to use was really nice, but the lighting in the gym was pretty low and I didn't have a tripod to use, so the VAST majority of the 72 pictures I shot of the actual game turned out pretty crappy. But I had some fun playing around with the camera after the game...

The program for the volleyball game against Mount Holyoke:

A poster in the Tech office for the movie Be Cool:

A random bottle of ketchup sitting in the Tech office:

A stuffed snowman:

Roadtrip, part deux

Well, yesterday was my last day at work, and today my mom and I are beginning the roadtrip from Seattle to Saline. Wish us luck! Here's the plan:

Washington
Idaho
Montana
South Dakota
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Illinois
Indiana
Michigan

Whew!

I want to bang on the drum all day

It's been a rough week. And it's only Wednesday. My fuse at work seems to be shorter every day. There are several concrete things that I'm frustrated with, but the bigger problem is that my quarter life crisis seems to be rearing its ugly head everywhere I look. I read an interesting article over the weekend that was written by a photojournalist in New York:

If you are not passionate and love what you are doing for a living, and if you do not get any personal satisfaction out of your accomplishments, then you will lack the desire to get up in the morning to go to work. There are too many people who go to work every day and spend it watching the clock, year after year, because they can't wait to leave "that place" and get home. These are the people who spend their working life waiting for retirement. When they do retire and look back on their careers, they see only misery. It doesn't have to be that way.

---

I studied commercial photography at Syracuse University. While I was a student there, I was offered a job at the Observer-Dispatch as a part-time photographer, and even though I had no interest in photojournalism at the time, I took the job because it was the only job I could find where I could make money doing photography. My first day on the job I was driving around town with a two-way radio and a police scanner chasing fires. My whole world changed that day. I knew I was in love. It was the first time in my life that anything felt so right.

I can't say that I've ever been struck by a "brick wall" feeling like that, at least not about work. I wonder if I'll finally be happy with the kind of work I've been doing once I don't feel so dumb in it; once I have the technical knowledge to back it up. But if not, I'm not sure I know what other fields to look in to find my equivalent of falling in love with a two-way radio and a police scanner while chasing fires.

Blue Angels

I love airshows. However, they always make me want to join the military... If I could be guaranteed a spot as a Blue Angel or a Thunderbird though, I'd drop this engineering nonsense and sign up immediately!

Oops!

My friend Brian from high school just started a company called Diamondhawk Graphics, and he recently sent me this shirt that he designed:

Blue Angels practice

I heard on the radio this morning that the I-90 bridge (connects Seattle to the great void to the east... crossing Lake Washington) is going to be closed for parts of today because the Blue Angels are practicing for the airshow at SEAFAIR this weekend. I thought about that for a minute... and realized that the only reason they would do that is because our friends the Blue Angels are worried about crashing into the bridge and killing unsuspecting commuters.

My confidence in the Blue Angels just dropped significantly.

To be fair, it's apparently because one of the stunts that they do takes place only about 25 feet above the bridge. In any case, it's been neat to hear them scream by overhead all morning.

~~~~~~~

Josh and I made it out to Snoqualmie Falls over the weekend. It's advertised as 270 ft tall - higher than Niagara Falls, but it wasn't as impressive since it's so much skinnier. Anyway, it was still really cool, especially because you could hike down from the observation deck to the base of the falls, and then jump over the trail fence and climb down onto the rocks to get even closer.





The rest of my pictures are posted here.

Return to Flight

It doesn't get much cooler than this!

Satellite tracking

Passed along to me by Emmett, another intern here: http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/JTrack/3D/JTrack3D.html

This is the coolest website ever! It opens up a java window that shows the Earth and over 500 satellites that are currently in orbit. You can watch it in real time or speed it up to some absurd rate so that GEO satellites zip around the Earth, and you can also click on the individual satellites to bring up a window with basic information about each satellite's orbital parameters and purpose for existing. Yay for space!



P.S. You have to accept the NASA certificate for the program to load all the satellites.

Slinkies and Mount Rainier

A funny quote from Mike, the Michigan intern who sits next to me: "Some people are like Slinkies - not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs."

I finally posted pictures from our intern trip to Spray Park and Mt. Rainier on Sunday... no editing yet, but maybe one day soon... Here's a shot of Matt and Mike standing underneath the falls:


And here's about as close as we got to Rainier at the end of the hike:

Pedometer

Another reason why Google maps are awesome:

http://www.sueandpaul.com/gmapPedometer/

No shuttle launch today

Boo for the low-level cutoff sensors in the external tank! And can I just say, I'm a little miffed that the Shuttle is actually launching this summer. One of the (small) reasons I decided to quit my job when I did was because it didn't sound like there was any way that STS-114 would launch before November, so it didn't matter if I stuck around for the summer. Now that it looks like it's going to happen, I REALLY wish I could be there for it. So, of course, the entire U.S. space program should have consulted my schedule before they decided on launch windows.

This afternoon I went running in Seward Park. It's quite a ways south of where I live, but I had heard that it was another one of Seattle's great parks for walking, running, biking, and just generally being outside, so I thought it would be worth the trip on an otherwise dull Wednesday. It turns out they don't call that area "Rainier Beach" for nothing - as soon as I turned the corner into the park - WHAM! There, floating above Lake Washington in some hazy clouds, was Mt. Rainier. I couldn't have put the scenery together better if I had arranged it myself. I've decided that I need to start bringing my camera with me everywhere I go, because Seattle is such a beautiful city.

Speaking of pictures, this is one that I took several weeks ago down by Pioneer Square. It had rained the day before and left big puddles throughout the square, and so I took a picture of the reflection in the puddle. A friend of mine had taken a bunch of pictures of that same thing and had rotated hers to make it appear that you were actually looking at the city, and I thought it was a really neat effect. Mine didn't turn out quite as well, but you get the idea.

Lake Washington

My favorite picture from today - a dock on Lake Washington.

The pickup

On Thursday after work, my intern friends and I went to the Boeing Museum of Flight. As budding aerospace engineers, we all get totally giddy looking at SR-71's and MiG's, plus admission to the museum is free on the first Thursday of every month from 5-9pm, and we're all broke college students. Anyway, toward the end of the evening, my roommate and I were talking about how much longer we wanted to stay and which exhibits we wanted to see before we left. As he wandered upstairs to look at World War I planes, I went back to reading a poster on the wall about World War II pilots. As soon as I looked to my right to see what else there was to read, a random Indian dude appeared next to me and started asking me about the museum and how I liked it. Expecting our conversation to be short and consist of useless chitchat, I gave some lame response and a smile and went back to reading. Mr. Body Odor plowed right on to ask me where I lived and if I had a lot of friends in Seattle. "I just moved here, and I'm trying to get connected to a social network," he explained eagerly. Umm... okay. I told him I didn't really know how one met people in Seattle since I had only been here for a few weeks and the only people I really knew were the other interns I worked with. I was really hoping he wouldn't ask if he could tag along on the next intern get-together, but it turned out there was a worse question: "Well, maybe you and I could hang out sometime." Before I could object, he started asking me if I liked hiking, rafting, and other things he dubbed "adventure sports."

Me: "Uhh, yeah... I hear this area is great for that sort of thing."
Random Indian dude (RID): "Okay, so maybe we could go hiking or something some weekend."
Me: "Um, I guess so..."
RID: "Okay then, can I get your phone number so that we can make plans?"
Me: "Um, I guess so..." (As you can see, I'm very articulate)

I couldn't really tell if he really was just lonely and wanted to get to know more people in Seattle, or if he was trying to ask me out, but either way, I didn't really want to spend any more time with this guy who wasn't very well acquainted with his shower. However, I couldn't bring myself to say, "No, I don't think so," because I imagine it would have been horribly awkward. So, I gave him a fake number. I have since been told (from a guy) that the appropriate way to handle this situation is to ask for his number and not give out mine, so that way he has no way of calling me. Well, live and learn, I guess.

Anyway, so that was Thursday. Today, I was wandering around Pioneer Square looking for the Elliot Bay Book Company when this beefy blond guy sauntered up to me while I was waiting to cross the street and asked if I was from Seattle. From experience, I can tell you that answering "yes" to this question means you will inevitably be asked where some bar is located, and with my general lack of Seattle barhopping this summer, I can never answer these questions. So with an apology and a no, I turned back to waiting to cross the street. Unfazed, he introduced himself as Brad and asked where I was going. I explained that I was just out wandering around Seattle, and then he asked if I wanted company and maybe we could stop somewhere and have a drink. I said no thanks, I just wanted to walk around and take some pictures. As he started asking if I was sure, I wondered why this had to be the longest "Don't Walk" of my life. We stood there in awkward silence for a few moments, and then he asked where I was from. After telling him I was from Michigan, he exclaimed, "I'm from South Dakota!" My face must have shown my confusion about why that was so exciting, so he explained that we were from sort of the same neck of the woods. Sure... Finally the light turned green, so I gave a quick "take care" and hustled across the street.

I dunno... that sort of thing just makes me so uncomfortable. Maybe because people never ask me out, so I just never know what to say. Or because it's never the cute, nice guys who ask you out - it's always the weird, sketchy ones. Oh well... either way, I'm not looking. :)

Rain

Today it's raining. Well, you say, it's Seattle, right? Yeah... but it's drizzling, a little chilly, and Friday, so if I were still in college, I'd be skipping class to stay in bed, sip hot chocolate, and watch movies all afternoon. Well, at least that's what my senior-year roommate and I planned to do some rainy day when we could both skip class, but that day never materialized.

I wouldn't be so bummed about going to work on a day like today if I didn't hate wresting with OTIS so much. The learning curve on this program is much higher than anything else I've used. Ugh. I don't want to talk about it.

In other work news, I think I might single-handedly go through the entire stash of hot chocolate mix here, making my do-it-yourself mochas. It doesn't look like anyone else really drinks hot chocolate, so I might have to bring in a Costco-sized box at the end of the summer to replace the stuff that I've gone through. And maybe I'll leave them with the same "no sugar added" crap that they have. Why on earth would you not add sugar to hot chocolate mix? If there's no sugar, what else is left??

My first issue of Time magazine came in the mail a couple days ago. Yay! I think I'm turning into my parents, because I think the magazine really has gone downhill over the past decade or so - it's becoming more like Newsweek. I'd feel better about myself if I were getting my news from more sources like The Economist or Atlantic Monthly, but the sad fact is that I don't have the patience or attention span to read magazines like that from cover to cover. So I guess I'll have to stick with my short, 1-page articles with a very American slant.

Some pictures from Vancouver

I didn't really have my camera at a lot of the opportune moments this past weekend, but I got a couple of shots that were okay. The first one is the view from our hotel room on Burrard Street, and the second one is overlooking Lynn Canyon (the cheapie version of the Capilano Canyon, a big Vancouver attraction).

Unicycles and the USPS

My package arrived today! I love the internet - you pick out what you want without having to deal with parking, lines, or noisy children, and then a week later - poof! It arrives on your doorstep. Today, my package contained a new hands-free headset for my cell phone and the new Howie Day CD. Most of the time, you can only expect to like a couple of the songs on a particular CD, but so far I like the majority of the tracks. Collide is still my favorite though.

So I felt like I had made some significant progress at work last week, which was good because I was supposed to give a status at our group meeting today about what I've done so far. However, this morning, I discovered that I had only made faux progress last week - it turns out the program actually wasn't giving me anything near what I had thought because I was printing out the wrong output. ARRGHHHH!!!! Thankfully, one of my co-workers helped me get it straight this morning, so I spent today trying to make some actual forward progress instead of the negative progress I made last week.

I love Seattle - today I came home from running to discover a middle-aged man learning to ride a unicycle. His back porch faces the back entrance to my apartment complex, and he was clinging to the railing for dear life as he haltingly pedaled back and forth. How great is that! I hope I'm still picking up new hobbies when I'm 40.

I've been thinking about entering a road race near the end of the summer. Well, actually, I've only been thinking about it for about the past two hours or so. I've been pretty good so far about keeping myself motivated to go running every day, but it'd be nice to have some sort of tangible goal in addition to the plain goal of undoing my slothfulness. I think that something between a 10K and a half-marathon would be a good distance, because I need a decent kick in the butt to get out of my 3-4 mile rut.