Registration Day

I got to campus early this morning to talk to a professor about being my faculty thesis advisor, but I still have another 10 minutes or so to kill before meeting with my regular academic advisor to register for my classes. I love Reg Day though - the excitement about taking new classes is still greater than the dread of the work that comes with them, and you run into all sorts of people that you haven't seen for months. Well, maybe just I feel that way, since my office is off-campus and several of my old friends from undergrad are in on-campus labs.

Anyway. I'm registering for a math class called Optimization Methods and I'm still deciding between two aero/astro classes: Feedback Control Systems and Aircraft Stability & Control. Feedback would be easy, I think, but it meets MWF from 2-3pm (bad for leaving early on weekends) and has a final exam (yuck). Aircraft Stability & Control would be harder, which might be a lot to handle with the optimization class, but it has no final and meets Tu/Th mornings. So then I wouldn't have class on Fridays. :) Yes, I realize these are terrible ways to decide which class to take. But I shop around for classes every term, so I guess this one is no different. In any case, I'm excited that this is my very last semester of classes!

Goodbye Marlborough St.

It is officially September 1st, which means I am officially squatting in my own apartment. Technically my lease ended at midnight, but I can't get my keys for the new apartment until 9am tomorrow at the earliest. And since I have no plans to sleep on the street tonight, my junk and I are staying here illegally. I've had these unsettling dreams the past couple nights that the current tenants in our new place don't return their keys on time and I can't get my stuff out of here... hopefully reality will be a nice change tomorrow.

Anyway, this past year on Marlborough Street with Glenn and Phil has been a good one, except for moving in last September. That was awful. And just for kicks, the internet has decided not to work since I (gasp!) unplugged the modem from the power strip and plugged it into the wall, so I'm stealing wireless from some other sap in the building. And now it's time for bed, since I need to be up in five and a half hours.

Cleaning

It's been a mostly boring evening - cleaning the microwave, cleaning the toaster, cleaning the bathroom... I also threw out a bunch of old stuff and left a couple things in the entryway of the apartment building, which has become part garage sale and part dumping ground. A few days ago I left some books and a coffeemaker; today I left a broken chair and table but picked up a fan. Very handy.

Tomorrow NASA will announce the prime contractor for the newly-named Orion crew exploration vehicle. The company I work for is on one of the teams that submitted a proposal, and everyone in the lab is excited about the announcement. The company has done some very important work in space exploration over the years, but lately the work has been on much smaller projects, so this contract would be almost like a revival of the 1960's. I'm really pulling for the company because my thesis is based on the Crew Exploration Vehicle, and although I'll still have funding even if the lab doesn't win this contract, it'll be much more educational and a lot more fun if I'm working as part of a team instead of on my own.

Last weekend my little sister left for Spain to start her semester abroad in Seville. She seemed a little apprehensive at first about getting there on her own, meeting the other kids in her program, and finding out who she'd be staying with (she chose to do a homestay, but they don't find out anything about their local hosts until they arrive), but I think she's settling in well. She's started a travel blog about her semester, which is here if you're interested in reading.

Speaking of traveling, Josh has been gone for almost three weeks now, and he won't be back until early next week. We've been able to talk on the phone a couple times during the brief times he's popped up in civilization, but mostly I've been sans boyfriend for the past three weeks. It's been sad. I never realized how often I called him for no particular reason at all, or how I unconsciously store away funny things that happen to me during the day so that I can tell Josh about them that night. But I've also realized that I've let him become my social crutch, so it's been great to hang out with some old friends again.

Packing

I don't think anyone should pack alone. Even if the other person who's packing is in another room in your apartment, on another floor in your house, or down the hall in your dorm, they should be there. This is for those "Ohhhhh!" moments when you discover your high school track shorts crammed in the back of your closet and realize that since the elastic is now so brittle that the shorts would fit a 200 pound man, you have to throw away this piece of your childhood. Since my roommates have all left, you, dear reader, are my audience. Your line is, "Awwwwww."

Thanks. :)

Also, it turns out that my most recent roommate used up all our packing tape when she moved out last week. She bought another roll to replace it, but it turns out that she bought the cheap, flimsy stuff that twists around and sticks to itself better than the box. And the cheap tape doesn't come with a dispenser. Argh!

I buy a lot of generic, cheap stuff instead of the name-brand stuff, but I happily fork over the extra dollar to get the thick tape that comes with a dispenser. I think everyone has those few things that they won't compromise on, and in addition to the tape, my list includes running shoes, ziploc bags, and toilet paper. I may have used furniture in my bedroom and no-name spaghetti sauce in my kitchen, but darn it, I buy Charmin toilet paper!

Blockbuster

Yesterday I looked at my credit card bill and saw four mysterious charges from Blockbuster on it. Two debits about a week apart, then two credits on a later day. All told, it says I owe Blockbuster $11.64.

Today I got a friendly postcard from Blockbuster reminding me to return a disc of 24 that I rented, along with The Ringer (didn't rent this) and some movie called Grandma's Boy (never rented this one either) on the same day. So I called my local Blockbuster and explained that I had only rented one movie when I came in that day, and was there some mixup to explain why I had been charged for not returning these movies that I didn't rent? I eventually talked with the manager who told me that never would one of his star employees have messed up and done something like accidentally left my account open while someone else was renting movies. So then, I asked, what should we do to resolve this? I rented the movie with a free coupon, so unfortunately I don't have a credit card receipt for it. He said that the only thing he could do was look through "the tapes" early next week and see if he could verify that I, in fact, rented only one DVD. I'm assuming this is their security video, but I'm not really sure. Anyway, since they're a "very busy store," he couldn't be bothered to check right now. Apparently I forgot how much of a madhouse Blockbuster is at 7pm on a Wednesday night.

This is really frustrating. I realize that it's only 11 dollars, but I did not rent those other movies, and I'm not interested in paying Blockbuster because someone else didn't return their DVDs on time. But I don't really have much leverage here. I can see that from their point of view, the computer says that I rented these movies and returned them late, so they assume that I'm lying to get out of paying the fees. I should have kept my receipt, I guess, but who keeps a receipt for a movie they got with a free coupon over three weeks ago?

I didn't like the fact that I had to give Blockbuster my credit card information to open the account, but I can appreciate that it's the only way they have to charge delinquent customers. But if they can't keep their stuff straight, then I'm not interesting in keeping an account with them.

Women be shopping

Yesterday my older sister, my mom, and I drove out to David's Bridal in Westland to get bridesmaids dresses for my cousin's wedding next month. Debbie choose the color azalea for our dresses but let each of us choose any style of dress in that color. Seems pretty flexible, right?

Wrong! Since the wedding is only a month away, the saleswoman told us that there wouldn't be enough time to order dresses, so we should both try to find something off the rack. The problem was that there's not much ON the rack in azalea (hot pink). So Katherine and I tried on a handful of dresses and vetoed everything because it was too big or too strapless (chests large enough to hold up such articles of clothing, unfortunately, do not run in our family). After we concluded that we'd have wear potato sacks to this wedding, the saleswoman reconsidered and thought that just maybe we'd have enough time to order dresses before September 16th. So we stuck with the styles we'd tried on that we liked but ordered them about 10 sizes smaller. So this is what I'll be wearing, as long as there's no ordering mixup. Then I'll have to pull out the pink potato sack.

Being in the store gave me a small glimpse of the stress and anxiety that can be caused by planning a wedding. The list of things that need to be written, bought, sent, arranged, and paid for seems endless, and the money is flying out of your hands faster than if you stacked up the dollar bills in front of an open window with a stiff breeze. Is there a point along the way where the process of creating the perfect day is more important than the fact that you're actually getting married? After watching a few friends go through this, it seemed like there was no way to plan a wedding that was both classy and inexpensive. So I began to think that maybe the best way really was to run off and elope - you eliminate the hassle of planning and can put the oodles of money that you or your parents don't really have toward buying a home or going on a nice honeymoon. After all, it's just one day. The marriage is what lasts forever.

I recently finished a book called A Walk Down the Aisle. It's about a couple who'd been living together for seven years before deciding to get married, and the author (the bride) talks about why she and her husband wanted to marry when it wouldn't have made any real change in their everyday lives. But although they already had a home together, they wanted to make the commitment to each other, in front of friends and family, to be together forever, not just while the relationship was easy or convenient. She also talked about how they struggled to decide which traditions to keep, which ones to toss, and how to create a wedding that felt honest and significant without being generic or cheesy.

So after reading the book, my cynical view began to soften a little. It's still just one day, but it's to celebrate a lifelong decision. And there are weddings I've been to that were classy and, I think, relatively inexpensive, so I guess there's still some hope that it can be done.

But I'd still rather spend the money on a trip than a dress.

They just keep on leaving

I met Greddy at 7 this morning to bike down to Carson beach and the JFK Library. I grumbled a bit getting out of bed at 6:30, but the ride was totally worth it. I've decided that August is officially the best month of the year in Boston - June was too rainy, July was too hot, and I don't have a car so I can't drive through the Berkshires to admire the fall colors. That sort of thing is pretty boring anyway unless you're hiking, camping, canoeing, or doing some other actual outdoor activity instead of just ooh-ing and ahh-ing from your car. But I digress. This August has been absolutely beautiful. Very sunny and warm without being hot.

So we biked for about two hours and then when I got back to my apartment, June was getting ready to leave for the airport. First Phil, then Glenn, now June is moving out. My little apartment is lonely again. It was nice to have some female company this summer after all the burping, football, and conversations composed entirely of movie quotes with the guys. I love them, don't get me wrong, but sometimes it would have been nice to have another girl around to balance things out.

~~~

I got a package slip in my mailbox last Wednesday, so on Thursday afternoon I trekked down to the post office to pick up the pillows I bought in Houston that Josh had sent to me. But when I got there, I was told that the package hadn't gotten back in yet, so I should come back the next day. I came back on Saturday and was told, again, that the package wasn't there, but if I could leave my phone number with the post office, they'd check their other nearby offices to see if my pillows popped up. This morning I called again to see if my long-lost pillows had shown up, and the guy I spoke with said that they had. Yay! So I can go pick them up this afternoon and toss out my old crummy ones. (Side fact: According to this website, up to 10% of the weight of a 2-year-old pillow is dust mites and their poop.) The dude told me that there was some confusion with my box because there was another name on it besides mine so someone might have assumed that was the recipient. "The name?" I ask. "Uhh... N-A-S-A," he says. "Anyone you know?"

Important?

Over the past week and a half, I've been asked to be the in-case-of-emergency person for Josh while he's tromping around in Peru, an executor for my parents' will (although low on the list), and a bridesmaid at my cousin's wedding. The first one makes my chest tighten, the second one makes me feel a little unprepared (the extent of my tax knowledge ends with the 1040EZ), but the third one should be a lot of fun! My cousin Debbie only recently decided that she wanted to have a couple extra bridesmaids, so it was a little last-minute (the wedding's in a month), but I think I'll still have time to get everything sorted out.

And although the first two things are a little morbid, I'm flattered to have been asked to do them. And I do think that I would be able to handle that sort of responsibility rationally if I ever needed to. I'm not sure if I like what that says about me though.

Lazy

The past two days have made up the laziest weekend I've had in a long time. On Friday, I was in bed by 9:30. On Saturday, I was woken up at 10am by the maintenance crew who had come to replace my bedroom window. (On the 4th, the glass shattered when I was trying to close the window. Turns out smashing a window isn't as hard as it looks in the movies! I got away with just a few scrapes on my hands and arms, but I went through a significant number of bandaids that weekend.) Anyway, one benefit of renting an apartment is that it usually comes with a maintenance crew, and the guys for my building are, thankfully, prompt and thorough. They removed the window frame and boarded up the hole over the weekend and then came back on Saturday to replace the window.) Anyway, after that I figured that I couldn't go back to bed (sleep more than 13 hours??), so I got up to run some errands. But after I got home, I spent the rest of the day reading, watching a movie, and going to sleep early - again.

On Sunday I woke up late and read some more, then biked out to Fort Independence. The actual fort was closed by the time I got there, but it was still nice to wander around Castle Island (not an actual island at all). On the east side of the island, there's a hill that slopes down from the fort to the water, and it immediately reminded me of Gas Works Park in Seattle. Ahh, Seattle... There was also an enormous cruise ship leaving the harbor, which was pretty cool to watch, and a reminder of Galveston, the only other place I've seen cruise ships up close. I've only seen them leaving their ports though, when everyone's cheering and excited about leaving on their trip. I wonder what everyone looks and sounds like when they get back... depressed that vacation is over? Glad to get out of their tuna-can room? Seasick?

Anyway. I also saw World Trade Center last night. I was prepared for it to be sad and depressing, but I wasn't prepared for how graphic it was. Definitely not a movie for the claustrophobic. I thought the movie was done well, but to me, the more powerful "movie" to watch is HBO's 9/11 documentary. I guess I was expecting World Trade Center to seem more realistic, which now seems silly, considering that it's still a Hollywood production.

Clarification

I should be clear that in the previous entry, my hangups come from the label and what other people will think, not the decision itself. I should also mention that this decision is by no means one-sided - we're both moving from different cities/jobs to be together.

The reason

As graduation looms on the horizon, I've gotten a few more questions about what I plan to do after getting my degree. There have been some subtle hints from a couple full-timers here about staying (which I don't want to do), and I feel I can get out of that relatively easily by explaining that I've spent over 5 years in Boston and am ready to move to a different city.

Of course, the next question that comes up is the our-group-in-Houston one: "Do you want to go back to Houston? Hopefully we'll be staffing up a lot down there over the next year." Well, that gets a little trickier to decline. I may very well be interested in a position with my current employer in Houston several years from now, so I don't want to burn any bridges, but I'm not interested in moving back to Houston right away. Not sure yet how to decline that one gracefully.

Which brings up another question that I'm not quite ready to answer: "Are you going back to JSC after graduation?" That ranks right up there with, "How did you like working at JSC? What was it like as a civil servant?" Again, not sure how to give an honest answer on that one that fits into 25 words or fewer.

I'm planning to move to Washington, D.C. after I graduate. Even if I didn't have personal reasons for moving, I love the city and I'd like a chance to work in the defense sector of the aerospace industry. If, however, I were only making the decision based on the job I wanted, I would be considering a handful of areas around the country, not just D.C.

But there are personal reasons involved. I'm moving there to be with someone that I've been away from for the past year. To me, there comes a point in any long distance relationship in which one or both of you have to move to make things work, and I really want this to work, so I'm going to move.

Unfortunately, there's still a small part of me that doesn't like how that sounds. When I was in high school, I knew plenty of girls (mostly) who went to specific colleges only to follow their boyfriends, and halfway through freshman year they were miserable because the school didn't suit them and the relationship had ended. Even though I know in my heart that this is different, I still feel like other people will judge the situation this way when I tell them about it.

Is this crazy? It's not like I'm moving to D.C. to become a 1950's housewife. And maybe everyone else that I talk to, especially at work, will understand my reasoning, and it's just me who views it as a jaded high schooler. I guess I just never thought I would move across the country for a guy, and it's taking me a little while to get used to that. However, I also never thought the best part of my life would be 1,800 miles away, so maybe I should just throw my high school brain out the window.

(Yes, I realize I'm breaking all the blogging topic rules - work, love life, etc. Too bad.)

JSC FCU

I am still a member of the JSC Federal Credit Union even though I'm no longer an employee at a qualifying institution or even a resident of Houston. This is primarily due to laziness on my part, but it's also because they have good rates, convenient online services, blah, blah. Anyway, I was checking my account this afternoon to make sure my direct deposit had gone through when I took a closer look at the banner on their website:


So they've got a little flash movie of some Star Trek Enterprise-inspired thing floating over the Earth instead of, I don't know... maybe the Space Shuttle? How about the International Space Station??

I guess I can add "sense of humor" to the list of things I like about the credit union.

My latest body jewelry

Before going in on Monday, I wondered what it would feel like to have these panels taped to my back for 48 hours. Turns out it feels pretty much how you would expect that much tape to feel: itchy. But the patches were removed and read today, so I only have one more trip to the dermatologist's office on Friday before I can shower again! The bath thing takes way too long. Plus, I've ended up dumping a lot of water on the floor while washing my hair in the sink, and my upper back is perpetually sticky. Definitely looking forward to the shower.

I didn't end up having a reaction to the contact lenses or the solution, but since that part of it was a pretty ghetto experiment, I'm not sure how much to trust the results. I had a couple weak reactions to two of the other substances on the regular patches though, indicating that I have contact allergies to colophony (also called rosin, which comes from pine tree sap) and black rubber mix. I got some information sheets from the doctor to explain more about what these substances are found in and how I can avoid them. The black rubber mix is pretty self-explanatory, but just in case a patient is confused, the sheet has some handy advice:

In general, avoid contact with black and dark gray rubber. If an object looks like it is made of rubber and it is black, it will probably be a problem.

Colophony is a little trickier. It's in many cosmetics and several industrial products like adhesives, varnishes, asphalt, soldering materials, drive belts, and linoleum. Kinda makes you think twice about using makeup if it's equivalent to rubbing asphalt into your cheeks.

The sheets also have some advice on how to test a particular product on yourself to see if you're allergic - put a small amount on the same patch of skin every day for a week and see what happens. The sheets caution, however, that you shouldn't do this for things like varnishes, solvents, or RUBBER TIRES.

Home

Just bought a plane ticket to go home from August 17th - 22nd. Yay! Plus, the fact that Spirit Airlines now has a direct Detroit-Boston route has given Northwest some competition, so both airlines' flights are cheaper than usual. So of course I'm flying on Spirit to help the competition. :)

Weekend

Over the weekend, Josh came to visit. Which meant that it poured. Whenever one of us travels to see the other, we always manage to bring along rain, snow, sleet, hail, or hurricanes in our carry-on luggage. So this time it thwarted my plan to spend the weekend on the Cape.

In any case, we still managed to fit in the usual things, like eating lots of ice cream and going to the movies. We saw You, Me, and Dupree, which had some good moments, but was too long. At some point over the past few years, it was decided that movies starring Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, or Will Ferrell, would extend past the appropriate 90 minutes into 2+ hours of seat-squirming. Somehow they didn't get the memo that the "plot" can't really support a 2-hour movie. Lance Armstrong's cameo was pretty funny though.

I also got a new TV over the weekend, to replace the behemoth one that my roommate took with him to DC. (He also took the TV stand and the couch, so the living room is pretty ghetto these days.) Josh and I also installed my air conditioner, which, happily, will make napping that much easier.

So today it's back to work, although it feels a little like the day after final exams, because we just finished our big trade study report on Thursday. Now I should be moving on to some new stuff, but procrastinating is a whole lot easier.

The one where you stop reading because all I talk about is my eyes

I know, I know... skip it if you don't want to hear about the latest episode of Days of My Eyes. We're going on four months now. That's what I told my doctor, and to my dismay, he didn't sound very concerned.

Anyway. The last time I wore contacts was two weeks ago, and up until Monday, my eyes weren't clear enough to wear contacts again, but they weren't so bad that I scared small children when I walked down the street. But they weren't really getting any better, and they started to get worse on Sunday. I started to scare small children on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday I woke up to discover that there were no longer any white areas in the "white part" of my eye - it looked like they had been bathed in red paint. I called my ophthalmologist's office and made an appointment for that afternoon, and when I finally got in to see the doctor, he gave me blah, blah talk about allergy flareups, nothing serious.

Believe me, I am the first one to be grateful that this is not a serious medical problem, but I don't think my eye doctor understands that this is still a huge deal for me. For one thing, he wears glasses, not contacts. I don't think anyone who hasn't worn contacts is aware of just how much contacts are a lifestyle, not just a convenient way of correcting your vision. And I'm sure that I'm not the first person to come into his office with this sort of problem, but it doesn't help when he brushes off my concerns about it, especially since I don't see other people on the street whose eyes look like mine. He seems to be interested in only treating the symptoms, not the root cause.

Bad beside manner aside, he wrote me a prescription for some weak corticosteroid eye drops, which I've been taking for a couple days now. Yes, contrary to everything that I learned in 9th grade health class, I'm taking steroids. And let me tell you, they work like magic. Their purpose is simply to inhibit the body's processes that cause inflammation though, so I'm not exactly cured, but hopefully the drops will jump-start my eyeballs. I'm supposed to use the drops for two months, so maybe by the end of that time, my eyes will have remembered that their purpose in life is to work for ME, not the other way around.

Boston bricks

Several months ago, I got a Boston guidebook so that I could read about all the things that I haven't seen/been to/eaten during my past 5 years in Boston, hoping that I could cram them all in by next June. Last Sunday I made it to the Boston Bricks, a little public art in Winthrop Square. After wandering around the square for an embarrassingly long time looking for these arty bricks on the wall, I gave up and turned around, only to stumble over them on the ground (literally) on my way back to my bike. The bricks show different places and events unique to Boston, and so in tourbook fashion, I took several pictures before leaving. :)

First, get your bearings.

Next is the Longfellow Bridge, whose supports sort of look like salt & pepper shakers. It looks a little more like this in real life.

It's made of cheese!

Every good city needs a clock tower...

...and a way to measure the length of a bridge. Smoot was a short dude, an MIT fraternity pledge back in '58, and his frat buddies decided it would be a good idea to use him to measure the Harvard Bridge. The length: 364.4 Smoots + 1 ear.

Operation Stop Putting Acid in My Eyes

This past Thursday I had an appointment with the allergist on campus. It was refreshing to talk with someone who was interested in hearing about ALL of my symptoms related to my eyes, not just brushing it off as one thing or another after hearing about a couple of my symptoms. It turns out she can test for environmental allergens, like dust and pollen, and could confirm my raging allergy to cats. She could not, however, test for allergies to things like contact solution or contacts. But the dermatology office can test for that stuff using what they call a patch test. They put two big patches on your back with several different common allergens, leave them on for two days, take them off and look for allergic reactions (swelling, redness, etc) and then you come back two days later and they read it again. This way they can test for contact allergens and things that produce a delayed reaction in your body.

I looked over the list of common things they test for, and I explained that I was really in there to determine if I was allergic to my contacts or the solution, not to see if I was allergic to random things like nickel or latex. She said that was fine - if I brought in some solution and a contact, she could add those to the patch to put on my back. Makes me wonder if I could just cut out the middleman (woman?) and tape a contact lens to my arm for a couple days and see if it gives me a rash afterwards. Not very controlled, obviously, but this patch test doesn't seem very high-tech either.

Anyway, the worst thing about the patch test is that it's a week-long, no-showering-allowed affair. I come in on a Monday to have them put on the patches, then come back on Wednesday to have them removed, then come back on Friday to have them read. The patches cannot get wet because that could reduce the allergic reaction and make it harder to read, and then your back can't get wet between Wednesday and Friday because that could also decrease the allergic reaction. So I can shower Monday morning and Friday afternoon, and in between I'm gonna stink. And it's the end of July.

The other lovely side note to this whole process is that I can't take any antihistamines for a week before the regular skin test, which will be a couple days after the patch test. So it's entirely possible that my eyes will return to all their red, itchy glory during the last week of July. I can't wait.

But even though I'm not looking forward to being an itchy, stinky mess, it'll be nice to have some answers. Seasonal allergies run in my family, and I've never been tested before, so I'm looking forward to actually knowing what I'm allergic to rather than just guessing. The patch test is a little different, I guess, because it doesn't seem like there are as many options for medication or treatment if it turns out I have an allergy to contacts. Solution, yes, but contacts, no. At least none that I know of.

But there is one way around this whole thing, and it stems from the fact that my mother is a certified genius. At least in my book. We were talking on the phone yesterday and she asked if there was anything else that was coming in contact with my eyes - makeup? lotion? I'm not much of a makeup wearer under normal circumstances, and I can assure you that nothing unnecessary has been coming near my eyes since March. But then I thought of one thing - my facewash. Back in November I started taking a medication that made my skin break out like crazy, and although I was able to switch to something else a few months ago and my face has calmed down, I've continued to use this soap that has some lovely acne-fighting acids. Of couse I avoid sticking the stuff directly into my eyes, but no matter how careful I try to be, somehow a little sneaks in every one in a while. Then it hit me - I've been putting ACID in my eyes twice a day for the last four months. No matter what other problems my eyes might have, this most definitely does not help. So I've gotten rid of it and am hoping that my eyes will at least improve some, even if it doesn't completely fix the problem.

Volunteering

A couple days ago, I volunteered for the first time at Planned Parenthood. There are plenty of ways to volunteer at the organization, but what I'm doing is pretty low-key: a handful of us show up on Wednesday nights for a couple of hours to do paperwork, data entry, make phone calls, or do other various administrative things. I was pretty excited about volunteering after going to the information session a couple weeks ago, but I was a little disappointed after leaving on Wednesday because we spent the whole evening alphabetizing returned mail so that doners' addresses could be updated in the database. To give you just an idea of how much returned mail, there were five of us sorting the mail, and it still took us about an hour and a half to do. And we only separated the mail into stacks of each letter of the alphabet, we didn't fully alphabetize them.

Anyway, I knew that the Wednesday night volunteering wasn't going to be very hands-on or a great way to become intimately involved with the organization, and that was fine because it was only a 2 hour/week commitment and I wasn't sure how much time and energy I wanted to devote to this or how much I would like it. But I sort of wish now that I had more time to volunteer doing something more interesting than sorting mail. I think after filling out the application and having to clarify in my own mind what it means to be pro-choice and why I wanted to volunteer at all, I was hoping to be able to put that into action. (In case you're curious, here's the short mission statement of the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts)

I've been asked by a few people why I want to volunteer at all at the PPLM. The most obvious reason is that I am pro-choice. I don't think abortion is something to be taken at all lightly, but I think every woman or couple has the right to decide for themselves whether they are healthy enough, financially prepared, and emotionally ready to be good parents. I'm well aware that plenty of unplanned pregnancies turn into happy, healthy babies and families, but I think every woman should be able to consider every possible option for herself and her partner.

The other main reason that I support Planned Parenthood is that I believe that everyone, regardless of age, gender, or income, should have access to information about sexual health and contraception. I know way too many college women who are sexually active and do not want to become pregnant, but they don't want to go on the pill because they don't want their parents to find out and they're still covered by their parents' health insurance. In addition, not everyone goes through a comprehensive sex education class in high school, and it's important that they have someplace to go to learn how to stay healthy, regardless of whether they're sexually active.

An interesting tidbit: the employees at Planned Parenthood refer to people on the other side of the abortion fence as "anti-choice" not "pro-life." I had never thought about how the term "pro-life" is subtly influencing, even if you had no idea what the two sides were debating. Everyone likes life, right?

Another interesting tidbit: the employees at Planned Parenthood are nearly all female, which is a nice complement to my nearly all-male environment at work. This means that men's restrooms don't exist there - instead, there are a couple of unisex bathrooms.

Cape

I was doing a photo search for Cape Cod but wasn't coming up with anything desktop-wallpaper-worthy, so I searched for just "cape", and this is one of the images I found. Hopefully someday soon, I can go to the Cape of Good Hope and stand on the edge of the Africa and look out on 270 degrees of water. *sigh*

Nice

Whatever ill will I had toward work over the past week or so (caused by it gobbling up my weekends and weeknights faster than I could shove more Matlab simulations down its throat and walk away for several hours) evaporated this afternoon because people here are just so... nice. On Monday I got an email from a man I've never met asking if I could release one of the 4 optimization toolbox licenses that I was monopolizing (out of the 7 total that the company has) so that he could do his work. I explained that I had been running simulations overnight and had gotten a bit greedy with the licenses and kept using them during the day, but I quickly apologized and logged off one of the machines and told him that I could release more licenses if he needed them. Instead of the sarcastic "thanks a lot for hogging all the machines" reply I was expecting, I got a quick, "No worries. One is all I need. Thanks!"

Round 2 came this afternoon. I got a phone call from another guy that I've never met, explaining the same situation: "I've been trying to run my simulations, but I can't because all the licenses are taken and you've got 4 of them checked out." Whoops again. So I gave him the same spiel and quickly logged off, which was met by a pleasant, "Thanks!"

I'm not sure why I was expecting everyone to be so mean about it (or maybe they were just doing a good job of pretending), but in any case, it's nice that people here are so cooperative. It makes up for that crack between the ceiling tiles and the wall that separates me from the loudest conference room on Earth.

Blogs and the World Cup

I was at REI during the final moments of the World Cup game yesterday, so I didn't know who won until I was biking home and I saw an SUV driving down Comm Ave with a giant Italian flag waving in the wind and heard the two guys in the car yelling something unintelligible (to me) in Italian. Later that night as I was walking down Newbury St, I heard a car down the street honking his horn in a sort of rhythmic way, not just the familiar 'hooooooooooooooooooooonk!" of a Bostonian who's mad at a tourist that can't navigate the city streets and traffic lights. Anyway, as the car got closer, I could see a guy hanging out the window, dressed in the Italian flag, screaming, "It-al-ia! It-al-ia!" along with the "honk-honk-honk" of the car horn. Not quite as crazy as this, but it was still entertaining.

Earlier that night, I was watching bits of Dateline as I waited for my laundry to dry, and they had a short story about how people in the U.S. haven't been watching the World Cup and aren't really that interested in soccer. I suppose the World Cup hasn't really reached the status of the Superbowl, but I read in the New York Times that World Cup viewership in the U.S. was up 126% on ABC and 70-something% on ESPN over the previous World Cup. Dateline, however, said that even with those increases included, U.S. viewership didn't amount to a large percentage of the total population. From my limited vantage point though, people have gotten into it a lot here - everyone's been coming to talk to my office neighbor (the resident Italian) about what's been happening in the World Cup over the past few weeks. My roommate went down to Fanueil Hall yesterday to watch the final game, and she said that after the game ended, the entire area turned into a crazy mosh pit. I suppose I'm not really a good counter-example to Dateline because I haven't been watching many of the games, but I don't really watch much football either. I only watch the Superbowl for the parties and snacks, and so that I don't look like an idiot when I come to work the next day and people ask, "Can you believe what happened in The Game yesterday??"

In other news, my friend Angela is currently in South Africa, spending a few weeks there sight-seeing and doing some animal conservation-type stuff. I think it's really cool that she's taken the plunge to go there without knowing anyone in her tour group, and it sounds like she's having a really good time. She's been keeping a travel blog here, if you're interested in reading about her adventures with cheap wine and elephants.


I stumbled across another interesting blog while reading a New York Times article about travel writers. The article focuses on how many people think of travel writing as a glamorous way to get paid to go on vacation continuously, but the reality is usually starkly different. It was interesting for me to read, considering that I'm one of those people who thinks travel writing would be one of the coolest jobs ever. The article mentions Leif Petterson, a travel writer currently in Romania, who blogs about his adventures here. I haven't read much of his site, but from what I have seen, it's pretty entertaining. My favorite quote so far: "I will do my best to not suck and provide insight into this low paying, exhausting, yet bizarrely fulfilling journey."

Houston

The best part of the last week was not the two-day work week, but the looong weekend I got to spend in Houston. I flew in on Friday night, apparently along with half of Texas. IAH was ridiculously crowded. On Saturday we met up with Sarah, Cari, and Gavin for lunch at Mely's and started drinking before 1pm. After my one margarita and a quick stop by JSC to see the shuttle launch get scrubbed though, I fell asleep for about three hours. Apparently my tolerance for alcohol has regressed to a new low. Don't even ask what happened after the bottle of champagne we drank on Saturday. But I was awake! for the delicious dinner that Josh cooked earlier that night.

Sunday was a day of errands, and on Monday we went downtown to the Museum of Natural Science to see the Body Worlds exhibit. I discovered, at the exhibit, that my queasiness of medical-related bloody body parts applied to dead stuff, in addition to alive stuff. The exhibit is pretty neat though, and it's definitely unique. I was doing fine at the beginning when all the dead body parts still looked fake, but then we got to the knee joint that's been mangled by arthritis - that's when my stomach started to churn. That was only the beginning of entire bodies cut apart to show various organs or a skinned man carrying, you guessed it, all his skin like a potato sack. And of course, no medical exhibit would be complete without a display of some lungs charred by cigarette smoke or in the advanced stages of emphysema.

After the dead people, we walked around Hermann Park a little bit and wandered through the Japanese garden. Then we went to The Chocolate Bar! Mmmmmm. They had chocolate-covered just about everything and 10-inch tall cakes, but we opted to just get ice cream. I think this place has my new favorite cookie dough ice cream. :) I had convinced Josh to go see Stick It with me at the dollar theater afterward, but we got there a little early, so we went next door to Slick Willie's to play pool and kill some time. We didn't do anything out of the ordinary that day, but it was really nice to just be able to go out on a date.

Tuesday was the 4th (hooray for Discovery!), and we met up with Laurie, Drew, John, and Anne for dinner at BJ's, and then went downtown to see Nick's new apartment. He's in a great location, and the apartment has an incredible view of the Houston skyline. There were just a few trees that obscured our view of the fireworks, so hopefully he can get those cut down before next year. ;) The fireworks were pretty cool, but I think Seattle's still got the best show that I've seen.

Josh and I both played hooky on Wednesday, lounging around until I had to go to the airport in the afternoon. The plane ride back was uneventful, but I did get to sit in the exit row seat with no seat in front of me, so I had plenty of leg room. But I spent most of the flight with my legs scrunched under me to hide the bag that I couldn't fit "under the seat in front of me" because there was no seat in front of me and I didn't want to leave my book and magazines in the overhead bin.

Anyway. Only one more trip to Houston, I think. I'll be in town again during the first weekend of August, but that'll probably be the last time for a while. It was a little weird to be back last weekend... I haven't been in Texas for a long time, and it felt somewhere between sad and happy, familiar and unfamiliar. It seems like my friendships with some people haven't changed at all, while others are completely different. It brought back a lot of memories of not fitting in, not feeling like it was the right place or the right time, and therefore happiness and some relief to be out of it, but there were twinges of regret when I saw everyone so excited about the shuttle flight. Although I'm happy with where my life is now, I'm realizing how impatient I was about everything back then. Things were bad, so I wanted to fix them immediately. My timescale was in months and semesters, but it should have been in years and projects. But maybe the line between wasting time and sitting on an okay job while you look for a better one is always blurry, no matter what your timescale.

Okay, enough philosophizing for one night. It makes me sleepy. Kind of like champagne.

It continues

In order to continue feeding my 24 addiction (still blaming Angela!), I'm thinking about signing up with Netflix to rent season 1 and the first half of season 4. I was comparing it to Blockbuster's similar plans, and it seems like Blockbuster has the edge because they also send you coupons for a few free in-store rentals each month. In the FAQ at Blockbuster though, they say that sometimes they have to ship a movie that's not first in your "queue" if the first one isn't available. It sounds like this happens on a fairly regular basis because certain titles are very popular, etc., and I would imagine this happens sometimes with Netflix too, but they don't advertise it. :) Any thoughts out there from those of you who aren't DVD's-by-mail virgins?

This afternoon I had an appointment with an allergist. I'm trying to pin down why my eyes have been freaking out this spring, and it would be nice to know what I'm actually allergic to and if there's a stronger medication or allergy shots that I can be taking to help my eyeballs. But when I got to the med center today and checked in with the receptionist, she gave me this weird look and started fiddling around with her computer and looking confused. "I don't see you on the schedule..." Crap. Did I write the date down wrong? "Oh, I see, it looks like you've been bumped." Bumped? Just what you want to hear when it's taken you two weeks to get in to see the doc in the first place. The receptionist never actually figured out why my appointment had been cancelled (isn't this her job as the receptionist??), but it sounded like the doctor had something personal that came up. So I now have an appointment for next Thursday, assuming that the doctor's dog doesn't develop the measles or something. I guess that's the risk you take when you go to a campus medical center that only has a couple doctors in each specialty.

This week has been great. Today is the first day I went to work this week, and it's already Thursday! And tomorrow I get to see more of Johnny Depp in eyeliner! Unfortunately, I just read a review on Entertainment Weekly that said the movie is pretty bad. However, I'd like to object. Nevermind that I haven't seen the movie yet. First of all, sequels are always worse than the original. Lower your expectations. Second, clearly you need a larger crush on Johnny Depp (or Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, take your pick). This way, you don't have to bother caring about the plot.

Summer

I kept thinking I would have more time to update this thing during the summer when I didn't have homework to worry about, but, it turns out I don't. I blame Angela. She lent me her DVD's of seasons 2 and 3 of 24 and I've been watching them nonstop for the past two weeks. The other part of this I blame on work. I spent about 70 hours at work last week, mostly just trying to compensate for my own stupidity. And as a reward, I got reprimanded via email this morning for not exiting the building the "after hours way" over the weekend. Great way to start the week.

In other news, I wore my contacts for the entire day today! Well, entire day being about 12 hours, but that's longer than I've worn them since the middle of March (March!), so I was happy about it. My eyes still look a little bloodshot by the end of the day, but I can't remember what they used to look like at the end of the day before all of this happened, so I'm not sure they're really any worse. It was amazing to run outside and go to the gym and actually be able to recognize people that I passed, see the skyline clearly, and remember that trees have individual leaves. I also never realized how much contacts block your eyes from the wind.

Almost two weeks ago, my newly graduated roommate left for a month-long trip to Europe. I have the apartment to myself until the end of the week, when my roommate's girlfriend's twin sister arrives to sublet. At first it was nice to have the place to myself because I could have the remote whenever I wanted and the bathroom stays neater with just one person. But it's really boring. I used to think that I'd want to live alone for a while after I graduate next year. I've always lived at home with my parents or with roommates, and it seems like having my own apartment is one of those milestones you're supposed to hit in life. But I don't really like living by myself. Too much quiet, and there's no one else around to kill the giant bugs that invade the apartment from time to time.

So, just four more days of work and then it's off to Houston! Mmm... margaritas at Mely's. :)

Get Over It

I don't fully subscribe to this attitude, but I would call myself a mild pessimist, which is why when I read this passage from Conquering Your Quarterlife Crisis, I laughed out loud:

"Will you always hate going to work?" asks John Pozniak, a 1999 Salisbury University graduate. "Yes. It is a way of life. There is a support group for it called Everyone, and they meet at the bars on Friday. It if was all sugar and cookies, why would anyone retire? The key is to find a job that doesn't suck 'as bad.' The good thing is since your job sucks, everything else you do seems that much better and more rewarding. A candied apple isn't as sweet when it's given to you as when it's something you work for. And after a long day's work, how good does a beer taste? Going on vacation, buying a home, these are all things you can't accomplish without a job. Plus, how nice is it to sleep in on a Saturday? Wouldn't be the same if you did it every day; it would lose its luster. Work is like a hangover. People should learn to appreciate both. I've accepted the fact that there are going to be crappy days, really crappy days, and 'eh, today wasn't so bad' days, but, honestly, that's why work is called work and not called 'fun' or 'naked Twister with the Swedish bikini team.'"

Florida

I've been so lazy since getting back on Sunday. I kept thinking I would feel all "refreshed" and "motivated" when I got back, but the only productive thing I've managed to accomplish since Sunday morning is buying groceries. Tomorrow I'll get back on a regular schedule, I swear...

Florida was awesome. :) We spent Saturday & Sunday in Jacksonville with the parents, and then drove through St. Augustine on Sunday on the way to Orlando. We spent Monday at Cocoa Beach, where I got to meet the real people I had to impress: Josh's nieces and nephew. Adults are relatively polite even if they don't really like you, but little kids are pretty honest about their feelings. They, of course, were adorable, and I was glad that we got to go to Disneyworld with them on Tuesday, since the park is so much more magical when you're under 10. But Disneyworld was HOT and crowded because of all the Memorial Day kid traffic. We finally made it through the line at Splash Mountain by the end of the day, and then of course it was time for pictures... so here we are in front of Cinderella's castle, appropriately damp:


My eyes looked pretty red and freakish by the end of that day, so we didn't go back for the parade of lights at night, which would have been cool. My eyeballs didn't look much better on Wednesday, so we spent most of that day just lounging around. Thursday we went to Busch Gardens in Tampa, and it turned out to be the perfect day - there was a huge thunderstorm in the afternoon so the park mostly cleared out after that, which meant that all the rollercoasters had less than a 10 minute wait to ride. I think we rode Sheikra 5 times in a row. :) The ride is crazy - you go up the initial hill and turn a short corner, and then the car dangles you over the edge of the first drop for about 5 seconds before throwing you down a 90 degree dive. Just enough time for you to gape at the track and pee in your pants. If you're interested, you can watch the video here, but I don't think the movie does it justice - the ride at least feels a ton faster in real life.

The night before we played some mini golf on a course that included a scavenger hunt and some live alligators! I was all excited to find out that they had alligators, but then later we went to a Go Kart place that also had alligators... so apparently I'm a big sucker for tourist traps.


But it seems that the alligators aren't the real thing you should be watching out for...


Ahh, vacation... I miss you already.

Done!

As of noon today, I am officially done with my first year of graduate school! Well, not if you count the summer, I guess, but I prefer to think of that sort of as no-man's land. I was really worried about my optimal control final, but I think it went all right. Oh, and I just checked my grade report online, and apparently my math grade has already been posted. Quick turn-around time, considering that we turned in our final projects just last Friday.

I had to go to the mall this afternoon to pick up a couple things, and in addition, I got a cute pair of white capri pants. :) I've never worn capri pants before because I have chicken legs, and I think they look slightly more normal when my thighs are visible to balance out the chicken-ness, so regular-length shorts are more my thing. I've also never owned a pair of white pants before, so we'll see how that goes... any bets on how long it will take me to spill something on them??

Last night as I was frantically cramming, my mom called and among other things, mentioned that my little sister's featured on the Eastern Michigan University webpage here. It's a short bio of Laura's college experience so far, posted along with some other students in an effort by the admissions office to show how EMU students are involved in different campus activities. Laura actually came to EMU as a transfer student, having spent her first year at a now-unmentionable small college in Michigan. It's funny - I thought I knew the whole story about why she transferred, but it wasn't until I read it in print, in her own words, that I really got how hard it must have been for her to do that. Our family moved once while I was growing up, and the first day of fourth grade at the new elementary school was most scared I had ever been in my 9-year life. Walking into the student center at MIT to begin FUP about a week before my freshman year started ranked a close second. There's something so nerve-wracking about being all alone in a new place, knowing that you're about to embark on something completely new without having any idea what it'll be like, and there's no option to just turn around, drive away, or try it tomorrow when you're feeling a little braver. But at least as college freshmen, you're all in the same boat - as a transfer, you're the new kid on a campus where everyone else already knows how everything works and has a tight circle of friends. I'm really proud of Laura for taking the initiative to get herself out of a situation that she knew wasn't right for her and then making the most out of transferring to Eastern.

The other thing I noticed while reading the article is that my little sister is really pretty!

Homestretch

Classes ended last week, so that means only one thing: finals week. Weren't grad classes supposed to have no finals?? I turned in my math project on Friday, but my exam in optimal control isn't until Thursday. Yes, I'm glad it's not until Thursday since I still have lots of studying to do, but I've been looking for every possible opportunity to not study since classes ended... Thursday was the OC, Friday was the Tiësto concert (which was an outdoor rave in the rain - absolutely amazing!), and then I came up with random errands and other "important" things to take care of this weekend... it's the homestretch, and I really need to just force myself to study hard for another few days so that my exam grade can make up for my second test grade... but really, the only thing I want to do is go shopping for summer clothes to wear in Florida next week. :)

So, the concert - it was awesome! We got it just before Tiësto came on, and he played outdoors from 7:30 until a little after 9:30. It started raining about half an hour into his set, which only made the whole thing that much better - everyone in the crowd started dancing and cheering even more crazily. It was really cool to see/hear everyone react to the music he was spinning - it would start out mostly treble, and everyone started clapping in rhythm, building up to the moment when Tiësto finally threw in the base. Then the clapping immediately switched to everyone just throwing their arms up in the air and dancing. It was really interesting how techno is so much more satisfying when you've heard just the treble and finally the bass is added, rather than when you just hear both together from the beginning. I haven't really figured out what makes a good techno/trance dj, but I think that's part of it. There was another aspect of the concert that I thought was unique to a dj performance rather than a singer or group - it was completely visible that Tiësto was having just as good a time as we all were. Ideally, every musician has a good time performing, but sometimes as the audience, it's hard to tell. Here, Tiësto was smiling and half-dancing along with us as he spun, which gave it a together-ness quality between the performer and the audience that I've never experienced at any other concert.

Our tickets were good for the outdoor evening concert and the indoor club concert at Avalon from 12-2, but my stupid eyeballs got pretty irritated with all the cigarette smoke, pot smoke, and who-knows-what-else smoke while we were jumping around in the rain, so I decided to pass on the 12-2 part. And in case you were wondering, dancing in the rain with glasses is a little difficult!

Thursday

Somehow it hadn't hit me yet that everyone was going to be leaving until Ann came over for the last time on Thursday. We were good friends in high school, but we didn't stay in touch during college, and it ended up being a mutual friend who told us that we were now both in Boston for grad school. It turned out that we were both big OC fans but didn't have anyone else to watch the show with us. (hecklers don't count!) So every Thursday afterward, Ann came over and we ate Subway and watched the OC. In honor of this past Thursday being the season finale and Ann's last week in Boston though, we decided to forgo the usual Subway routine and try the happy hour at Daisy Buchanan's. We made it back in time for the OC to watch all the characters graduate from high school (with an appropriately tragic ending), and then as Ann got up to leave, I realized she'd be the first person I'd have to say goodbye to this spring. It's nice that we're both from the same hometown and will have more opportunities to get together than those friends from college who are moving to San Francisco and it's entirely possible that you'll never run into them again. But it was still sad... especially since we'd made the effort to "reconnect" after high school, and then we only got a semester to hang out again before Ann left Boston for the real world. :(

The forecast

Seriously, I'm done with the rain. It's been days and days and days, and parts of MA and NH are flooding. As for me, just my shoes are flooding, but my umbrella's hangin' in there like a champ. :)

So I'm back to the glasses again. I went to a real opthalmologist last Wednesday, and he told me that it's either just seasonal allergies or an allergic reaction to my contact solution. So he gave me some eyedrops to use for the next two weeks while I wear my glasses, then I can start wearing my new daily disposable contacts while still putting in the drops twice a day. In many ways, my eyes are looking a lot better, so I'm really hoping this will fix the problem. On the other hand, I'm going to be pretty annoyed with the campus medical center if they've given me the run-around for 6 weeks about conjunctivitis, contact lens allergies, etc., if this is just a seasonal allergy thing. My big fear (yes, I know this is going to sound ridiculous) is that I'll have to wear my glasses when I'm on vacation in Florida in a couple weeks... I can't ride rollercoasters at Disneyland in my glasses!

My big excitement yesterday, other than the season pre-finale of 24, was that I got a new phone! My old phone worked great most of the time, but often it would just decide to not pick up a signal and sit around for hours pretending that it didn't know how to work. I wouldn't be able to call anyone or even send text messages because the reception was so poor. When I called Verizon's tech support, they told me that they didn't guarantee reception inside buildings, so there wasn't much they could do. But the guy also told me that I was due for my "new every two" upgrade, so yesterday I went to the store and got this one. I'm not very impressed with Verizon's phone selection, and this one has its share of annoying features, but it seemed to be the best of the bunch for me. I debated getting the Razr since it's really the only small phone that Verizon sells, but the reviews I read online said it was either fantastic or awful, and the salespeople at the Verizon store seemed to agree with awful...

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.

England, day 1

Greetings from the little island across the pond. It's currently 3:50am, and even though I went to bed only about 4 hours ago, my confused body still thinks it's only 9:50pm, so I'm wide awake.

My flight left at 7:10am yesterday morning, and after an early cab ride, I made it to the airport before even the British Airways customer service people. About 20 people were already in line to check in by the time I got there just after 5 am, but the BA employees didn't show up until about 5:15.

The flight was relatively uneventful... it was the first time I've flown on a 777, so that was neat. There were a couple toddlers sitting across the aisle from me, and I was very impressed at how well-behaved they were for the entire 6 hour flight. I watched Derailed during the first part of the flight, but I fell asleep later during Good Night and Good Luck, so I can't really recommend either one.

Lauren met me after I went through customs and picked up my bag, and then we took a cab to get from Heathrow to her apartment in Windsor. But instead of just heading outside to where you would expect a bunch of cabs to be lined up, we had to call one. The cab turned out to be a Mercedes, which I realize doesn't have the same luxury status here as it does in the US, but it was still nice. :)

After getting to the apartment and dropping off our stuff, the two of us and Lauren's roommate John went out to a bar/restaurant called Brown's to have a drink and some food. The only beer that I recognized on tap was Amstel, but I wasn't about to get a beer in Windsor that I could get at home, so I tried an Erdinger, which is a German wheat beer. It came in the most ridiculously tall skinny glass, but it was surprisingly good. We also got an appetizer titled "Rocket, Parmesan, and Flatbread" which was a bunch of dark green lettuce-type veggie (i.e. rocket) and parmesan cheese piled onto some flatbread and doused with olive oil. It was pretty good too, although I now (still?) have killer garlic breath.

We walked home along the River Thames and I got to see a little more of Windsor, albeit in the dark. Far and away, the main attraction in Windsor is Windsor Castle, but the town itself is otherwise very quaint and was very quiet at 11pm on a Monday night. The streets are very narrow and all of the residential buildings we passed are all just two stories high. They looked like townhouses because everything was connected. Postage-stamp yards looked pretty common.

Just down the street from Lauren's building (which is much newer, so it's 3 stories tall) is a roundabout, which we drove through on the way home from the airport and on the way to Brown's. I've decided the only thing more nerve wracking than driving through a regular rotary would be driving through a British rotary where traffic is going the wrong way and you're sitting on the wrong side of the car. :)

Eeeearly Sunday morning

Okay, I consider pre-8am to be early, even if other people don't. I'm sitting here waiting for my laundry to finish so that I can put it in the dryer. But this isn't just any Sunday morning waiting for laundry - it's the day before I leave for England! I'm visiting Lauren, a friend from high school who's doing some of her med school rotations in Windsor. I missed my chance to visit her in St. Maarten (ahh... tropical paradise), so I'm going to rainy, cold England instead. :)

The only problem with this whole trip is that I have a project due in my math class the Wednesday after I get back, so I've been scrambling to finish as much of it as I can this weekend so that I don't have to do any work while I'm there. Ugh, I guess I can't really complain because we don't have many regular problem sets in that class, but this isn't very good timing! Stupid grad school - everyone expects you spend holidays (okay, I guess spring break isn't officially a holiday) working on your research instead of getting away from your research. Anyway, woe is me.

So this trip will bring my total time spent abroad (excluding trips to Canada or my 3-hour foray into Tijuana) to about two and a half weeks. When I was a senior in high school my family went to Munich for about four days to visit my older sister who was studying abroad there, and then when I was a junior in college I went to England over spring break (notice a theme here?) to visit a friend who was studying abroad in Cambridge. We went to Paris for a couple days and spent the end of the week in London.

(Apologies for the old camera that I took on the trip. And the fog.)




So I've seen enough to be able sigh knowingly and tell someone else that seeing the Mona Lisa at the Louvre is sort of a disappointment, but I don't actually know anything about... well, anything in Europe.

Well, time to rescue my laundry. Less than 24 hours!

Last April

To be filed under "what does beer on a Tuesday make you look like?"

(compliments of the 2005 Houston Yuri's Night photo gallery)

Seriously though, I looked at the Yuri's Night homepage to see if there'll be a party somewhere nearby this year, and the closest one is in Worcester, Mass, which, unfortunately, is out of my public-transportation-accessible radius. And there will be no more commas for the rest of the post.

Agh, I'm having a serious crisis of motivation at work lately, which explains why I'm blogging at 10 am. It doesn't help that I spent the weekend in Baltimore pretending that real life didn't exist, when in real life, I have a test coming up tomorrow. This is why I'm tired of being in school (already) - tests.

Just when I thought I was a savvy Bostonian...

Yes, it's true. After living in Boston for four and a half years, I've fallen under the illusion that I fit in here, that people don't look at me and immediately assume that I'm from out of town. I've learned my way around most of the major neighborhoods, I can get from point A to point B on the T (short for MBTA, the public transportation system), and I can maintain my balance on the trains when they lurch forward or stop quickly. This month I've become one of the masses who commutes to work on the bus.

So. This morning I left my apartment and saw the bus stopped at a light just before the bus stop. I half walked, half jogged to the stop so that I'd get there in time, pleased with my luck at not having to wait in the cold for the somewhat unreliable #1 bus. I waited in line behind a girl who was paying her fare with cash, which entailed shoving her 3-times folded doller bill into the much-too-small slot, feeling somewhat smug that I could just swipe my pass and not hold anybody up. As usual, all the seats were taken, so I grabbed onto an overhead hold and prepared to stand for the short trip. Instead of holding onto the steel rail, I grabbed one of the cloth handles that hangs on the rail, because the actual rails are just tall enough so that I look a little ridiculous hanging onto them, almost as if I'm hanging from the monkey bars. Plus, the rails are located directly above the knees of the people in the seats, so it's a little awkward to be standing practically in someone's lap. (It also leads to a sort of face-in-crotch situation.)

Anyway, the bus got across the bridge and had to stop for a red light, not a sudden stop or particularly jerky, but I wasn't paying any attention, so all of a sudden I was very quickly sliding toward the front of the bus. I was still hanging onto my cloth handle, which had the nerve to slide along the rail, and then instead of just sliding forward, I was sliding to the left, which meant that I started to swing uncontrollably in a giant circle. Turning, turning... I was completely off-balance and swinging in front of the seated passengers until some nice girl in the front of the bus grabbed my shoulders and stopped me from continuing to twirl like a merry-go-round. (I also ended up practically hanging in her lap, so maybe it was just self-defense.) While the bus was still stopped, I quickly let go of the offending cloth handle grabbed onto the (stationary) rail and planted my feet directly underneath me, secretly hoping I would disappear or the bus would swallow me up. Thankfully no one laughed, or at least they did it quietly enough so that I couldn't hear it, but man - when the bus stopped at MIT, I could not get off fast enough.

An email forward

The perfect example of how a picture is worth a thousand words. Just think how long this takes to explain to somebody! :)

Alaska

Wow, if this National Geographic photo doesn't make you want to go to Alaska RIGHT NOW, I don't know what will. Ahh, my travel list gets longer and longer and I keep getting poorer and poorer. Stupid grad school.

My new pet peeve

Websites that don't load until whatever stupid banner ad at the top has done all its stupid animations, chickens running across a field, Netflix DVD's flying themselves into your mailbox, etc. It's especially annoying when you're just hitting the "back" button or only interested in quickly checking the headlines (like who else Cheney's shooting) and you have to wait 10 seconds while some ridiculous ad prances across the screen. Granted, maybe I shouldn't be griping about this when the most offending website is people.com, but still! When a girl's gotta see pictures of U2 from the Grammys, these things are important!

15 minutes of fame

Well, maybe one day of fame: my officemate's picture is in the New York Times today, as part of a story on the weekend's snowstorm! The article is here, and if you scroll down and click on the photographs link on the left, he's in the last picture in the slideshow.

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.