Pumpkins!

So it’s not quite Halloween, but Josh is going to be out of town on Wednesday, so we decided to carve our pumpkins a few days early. It’s been a while since I’ve done this, and I first carved my pumpkin’s features way too small, so you couldn’t really see any light through the pumpkin. The candle even went out when I put the top on! So, back to the drawing board... but after gouging my pumpkin a little more, success!

While we were getting the camera set up so that we could sit behind our pumpkins, Josh’s pumpkin started to get a little asthmatic, so he had to resuscitate it while I fiddled with the camera.


But finally we got everything together.

A few pictures to go along with the previous entry

I took a few pictures at the Library of Congress last weekend, but the ones with flash looked pretty dark on my camera’s tiny screen, so I tried to take the next couple without the flash, which turned out to be a bad idea. Anyway, here’s the ceiling in one of the main rooms:


Here’s the floor of that same room, although a little blurrier...


I only took one picture outside while we were wandering around the mall—this was taken the steps in front of the Capitol, looking down the mall toward the Washington Monument.


Going downtown, especially to Capitol Hill, the White House, or the monuments, always makes me appreciate living here, even though I don’t actually live in the District. It’s easy to get cynical about politics and the politicians in particular, but walking around those buildings and getting to do things like read the actual Declaration of Independence at the National Archives always gives me a renewed sense of appreciation for the way our country was founded and what our current leaders do here.

And last, Josh’s dad took a picture of Josh and me at Cosi, enjoying our s’mores. :)

Ahh, Friday night... that magical time where you bask in the glow of your computer screen, wander the deserted hallways on the way to the bathroom, and savor the peace and quiet in your office that only comes when everyone else has left for the weekend.

Or not. UGH, I can’t believe I'm still here. The worst part is that the guy who asked me for the data left hours ago—must be nice.

In other news, Josh and I finally got together for lunch today. For months I put that on my list of “won’t it be great to be able to do _____ together once we finally live in the same place?” things to do with Josh, and it was nice today. It was pouring, of course, but we managed to find a mostly-equidistant place to have lunch and catch up in the middle of the day. We probably won’t do it very often though, since our offices are relatively far apart.

Last weekend Josh’s parents came to visit, so we had dinner together on Friday, went to the Library of Congress on Saturday, and lounged around my apartment on Sunday watching football. If you haven’t visited the Library of Congress before and are planning a trip, my advice is to lower your expectations. The architecture and paintings/sculptures were nice, and I’m not quite sure what I was expecting, but the Library didn’t quite live up to it. Our tour guide was pretty good though, and I was tempted to get a library card just so that I could say that I have one. You know, so I can whip it out at parties and impress all my friends... In any case, we had perfect fall weather last weekend, so the four of us spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the National Mall. Later that evening we took the metro to Old Town Alexandria and did some more wandering and eating. We went to Cosi for dinner, which wasn’t all that remarkable except for the fact that you can get s’mores for dessert. Mmm...

In other, other news, my former thesis advisor is trying to get me to write a paper and submit it to an AIAA conference (or journal). He’s mentioned this to me before, and when he would try to bring it up while I was still trying to graduate, I did the “la, la, la, I can’t hear you!” routine because I literally couldn’t imagine a time when my thesis would be done and I could concentrate on other things. But I guess now enough time has passed and my memory has gotten foggy enough that I’m actually considering it. Well, that, and the fact that my advisor casually mentioned that the next GN&C conference will be in Honolulu.

!!!

So maybe I’ll dust off the ol’ thesis and see if I can’t put a paper together. Hawaii definitely provides some incentive.

Happy birthday, Laura!

Happy belated birthday to my little sister Laura, who turned 22 yesterday! My gift to her is a trip to visit me in Washington, D.C. in a couple of weeks. Laura’s already picked out a Spanish restaurant that she wants to go to, and we’ll probably hit up at least one of the (free!) Smithsonian museums, but the rest of the weekend is still up for grabs. I’m looking forward to doing some touristy stuff that weekend, partly because I don’t make it downtown very often, and partly because I’m hoping most of the summer crowds have left. Somehow, Laura getting older doesn’t phase me all that much, but when I think about the fact that my next birthday will bring me closer to age 30 than to age 20, I get a little weirded out. And sometimes I can barely believe that my older sister Katherine is already 28...

Anyway, speaking of playing tourist, Josh’s parents are coming into town this weekend, so I’m looking forward to spending time with them, although I’m not sure what they’ll want to do while they’re here. If nothing else, they’ll have to play the Wii if they come over to my apartment. :)

Oh, and I almost forgot—my mom is leaving for China tomorrow! She’s spending about 10 days over there visiting Katherine. I think my mom’s a bit apprehensive about spending that many hours on a plane (who wouldn’t be??), but she’s really looking forward to seeing my sister. I don’t usually think of my mom as a big traveler, but she’s got all sorts of cool trips lined up—China, a mission trip to the Gulf Coast this winter, and a potential month-long stint in Brussels! The Brussels thing would be for work, and admittedly, it sounds like it’s in the early maybe/maybe not stage right now, but I’m definitely pulling for it. I mean, come on—someone’s got to go along to help her look for an apartment and get to know the area, right? ;)

I’d say it’s about time for an update...

First off, my sincere apologies to my grandma for not updating in basically forever. :) There was the thesis, graduation, the summer of glorious unemployment, the trip to Europe, the time at home, the move, the new job, and the being in a relationship in which the people involved can finally talk to each other in person each night instead of on the phone. Amazing! What will they think of next??

My new job has been going fine. It’s not spectacular, but it’s not bad, and there are some nice perks that come with working for a relatively small space company. Tonight, however, is not one of them—it’s nearly 7 pm and leaving work is still a ways away. The schedule for this program is very tight, and that combined with my general lack of knowledge about what I’m doing can make for some long days at work.

The most important change that’s happened over the past several months is that my parents, married for 31 years, are now divorced. The past several years have been rocky for them, so my sisters and I shouldn’t have been shocked when we found out, but it’s been a struggle to deal with. My parents told us their intentions to split up back in December, but the divorce wasn’t finalized until about a month ago. I seem to oscillate between these overwhelming pangs of despair because it feels like my family is disintigrating, and periods of calm where I realize that although a lot’s changing—my parents are separating, they’re selling our house, my dad’s getting remarried—everyone’s still alive and healthy and polite to each other. Since December, my periods of calm are now outnumbering the times of despair, so it’s seems that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

Ew, ew, ewwwww

Soon after my roommate and I first moved into our current apartment, we discovered that we had ants. Ew. My mom and I bought ant traps and I called the management company to get them to come out and spray. It all seemed to work, because up until yesterday, I only saw a couple of ants during the entire rest of the year, probably ones that had hitchhiked their way in from outside on my shoes.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last. I’ve been out of town for the past week and a half, and I came back last night to discover that the ants were back. Worse, they were on the countertop nearest to the trash instead of just on the floor. Ewwwww. So I took out the trash, vacuumed, washed the counters and nearby wall, and rearranged the ant traps. Problem (mostly) solved.

This morning I woke up to find a scrap of toast on the floor and a SMALL ARMY OF ANTS! EEEEWWWWWW! I am so looking forward to moving tomorrow and finally having my own place.

~~~~~

I know I haven’t posted a trip report of eastern Europe, but I haven’t forgotten about it. It feels intimidating to sort through our hundreds of pictures, as well as put together something that’s insightful, intelligent, witty, and fun-to-read... but it’s still coming, I promise.

New home

Josh and I got back from our eastern Europe trip on Monday, and I'm finally starting to feel like I'm re-adjusting to being home. I'm not going back to Boston until Monday, so I've had plenty of time to finish apartment-hunting and start on the rest of the things on my to-do list.

But first, I finally have a new apartment! I'm not moving in for another 3 weeks yet, but I'm signing the lease tomorrow and can finally get started with all the other stuff that I couldn't do before because I didn't have a permanent address in Virginia. I decided to try living by myself, so I'm in a 1 bedroom / 1 bath:

There are several other pictures on the website of the apartment complex and the model apartment (complete with plastic pie in the kitchen...).

However, I have no furniture, so my living room won't have a nice couch or coffee table for a while.

A few things

1. I graduated!!!!!!!!! I turned in my thesis on time, my advisor finally emerged from his house in the ’burbs to sign it, and I walked across the stage to accept my degree. Proof:

My family (minus my older sister, who’s in China) and Josh came for the weekend and sat through the blistering heat to see... mostly the backs of other people’s heads. They were gracious enough not to complain too much. :)



Although the Ph.D./Sc.D. graduates wear the funky robes & hats, the masters students look mostly like undergrads, with the exception of weird sleeve extensions on the gown. We joked that it was my bat costume:

My officemate put the sleeve extensions to good use: they held her lip balm, cell phone, and sunglasses throughout the ceremony.

My family, Josh, and I spent the rest of the weekend being tourists. Here we are in Beacon Hill:


2. Josh and I are going to eastern Europe for two weeks! I originally decided to go because a good friend of mine from high school is living in Prague, but since Josh was able to take some more time off from work, we’re going to be able to also visit Budapest, Krakow, and possibly Warsaw. I’m super excited about the trip, but since we haven’t had much time to plan for it, there’s still a lot to do before we leave on Monday.

3. I went home for a few days after graduation, hung out with my family a lot, and saw all of the remodeling that’s been going on at my parents house, which they’re getting ready to sell. I also picked up my car and drove it to DC so that it’ll be there when I start work in August. Have I mentioned that I accepted the Virginia job? It was a really tough decision, but I felt like I’d be missing a once-in-a-career opportunity if I passed up the job now. I’m not convinced that this is a place that I’ll want to stay for years and years, but it’s the best decision for me at this point.

4. I started apartment-hunting in DC earlier this week. I found two complexes in the Reston/Herndon area that I liked, but I wasn’t sold on either of them enough to fill out an application on the spot. Plus, I might end up rooming with two other girls that I met through craigslist, in which case I might end up further south, like Fairfax. I haven’t met either of the girls yet, although we have a “date” lined up for this Sunday. I’ve only been on one other girl date—the time I met my Houston roommate before we moved in together—so I’m not really sure what to expect.

5. Earlier this week I spilled milk on my laptop keyboard and ruined it. At first I thought it might dry out and be okay, but I still can’t get several of the keys to work, so I ordered a new keyboard through Dell yesterday. It figures—I ate breakfast and dinner in front of my computer nearly every day for the past semester and it was fine, but four weeks after school’s over, I dump something on it. My idiot mistake is costing me $35 and currently, some awkward use of a old external keyboard.

Deadline

Today is my department's thesis deadline. I'm at 233 pages. It's 5am, and I'm tiiired. I think this was my first all-nighter since undergrad. Ugh, I'm old.

My faculty thesis advisor is in the process of giving me an ulcer. He is mysteriously unreachable, and I need to get my title page signed today. He wanted to see a more up-to-date draft when I talked to him on Wednesday, but he promised he'd sign my thesis when I brought him the draft on Thursday morning. Well, yesterday came and went with no sign of the man. So today is the final day... the process of turning everything in becomes significantly stickier if he's MIA again.

In the continuing trend of my whining, LaTeX takes FOR-E-VER to compile and display my thesis. Therefore (heh, I've gotten so used to using words like "therefore," "whereby", "thus," etc.), I have to wait nearly 5 minutes for it to chug and redisplay when I recompile after any changes.

I'm tempted to lie down for an hour or so, but I'm afraid I'll feel even worse if I sleep. Plus, there's always the added panic of, "what if my alarm doesn't go off?!?" Oh, nevermind... I forgot that I haven't finished my acknowledgements. I guess I'm staying up.

182 pages and counting...

About 150 of those pages are the actual thesis; the rest are appendices. I still have to add Appendix B (additional results), finish Appendix A (detailed description of my algorithm), write the abstract, and make any final changes that my advisor can come up with on Monday. The thesis deadline is Friday. It's going to be close, but it'll happen. IT WILL HAPPEN.

They've started putting up the graduation stuff on the lawn. It's currently getting soaked in the rain, but it was another reminder today as I was walking to work that the end of the term is actually here. Apparently this coming week is finals week? It's amazing how insulated you can get from that stuff when you don't have any finals to take. :)

The newest demotivator

From despair.com:


For the past few years, my dad and I have given each other a Demotivators® calendar from for Christmas. In college, I always had the calendar up on my wall, and once another friend of mine gave me a real motivational poster. “I saw your calendar and thought you might like this,” she said innocently. I chuckled to myself because that’s what I love about these (aside from the biting sarcasm, of course)—if you don’t look closely to read the fine print, it looks like any other drippy motivational poster that you see ads for in Skymall.

You know you’ve been staring at Matlab too long when...

... your thesis plots start to look like robots! These figures look completely boring when they’re stretched out, but when they’re munched up like this, I think they look like cute little aliens. :)

When I get a little stressed, I eat a lot. Usually in front of the TV, trying to unwind. When I get more stressed, I eat very little. I’m barely hungry, not much sounds appetizing, and even if I do manage to find something I’m interested in eating, I can’t eat very much. I was doing okay in this department until yesterday. I couldn’t eat much breakfast and my lunch made my stomach turn. This morning, breakfast was a lost cause.

I gave my technical advisor a draft of chapters 6-7 of my thesis yesterday. He’s already seen chapters 4 & 5, but I’m still working on chapter 8 (results) and haven’t really started chapters 1-2 (intro & equations of motion) or chapter 9 (future work). Chapter 3 is written, but the first part needs to be axed. After all that’s done, I need to write the abstract. Did I mention I’m supposed to have a complete draft by Monday to give to my faculty advisor? On my schedule for next week is writing the appendices, which will be detailed diagrams of my algorithm and the original algorithm, as well as the zillions of plots that I can’t include in chapter 8. Last are the acknowledgments. If I can make it that far, I’ll know I’m gonna make it.

Bike seat

Last week, my fantastic boyfriend offered to run errands for me while I worked on writing my thesis. One of these such errands was getting my bike fixed. I usually leave my bike locked up to a parking meter outside my apartment, which means that it gets mangled from time to time by inept parallel parkers or stumbling drunk college students. For example, one day I came outside to find that overnight the chain had come completely off the front rings and was hanging by the right pedal. The last time I rode my bike before winter was in full swing, I noticed that the rear brake was sticking to the hopelessly misaligned rear tire and at regular intervals, it would make a horrendous squealing noise (and jerk me forward when I was trying to coast). When I tried to brake, I got a low roar. The combination sounded like a cat getting run over by a garbage truck.

I figured I’d look into it later, since I wasn’t planning to ride my bike much in the snow. I brought it inside and promptly forgot about it. A friend of mine makes and fixes bikes, so when the weather got nicer and I remembered, I tried to coerce him into fixing my bike with an ice cream payment. But somehow we could never settle on a good time to do all of this.

Enter: Josh. Of course, by the time Josh wrestled my bike down the four flights of stairs to get it outside, the squealing was at a minimum. “So, what exactly is wrong with your bike?” he asks. I swear, it was worse in the cold! In any case, the bike is now fixed, rideable, and much less noisy. :)

So now that the weather’s nice, I’m back to riding my bike to work. The only problem is that since it’s been a while since I last rode regularly, I haven’t redeveloped the callouses or posture necessary to keep my (ahem) butt from getting bruised by the seat. Ouch.

The longest document I have ever written

My thesis draft has now exceeded 100 pages! A few people have asked me if I have a page goal, and the answer is no. I’m writing as much as it takes to explain what I need to explain. I imagine it will be about 150 pages of actual text and maybe 30 pages of appendices. Hitting 100 pages was just cool because it’s a round number and I’ve never written anything this long before.

When I was looking at different graduate schools, I found that several places offered non-thesis options for the master’s degree—it was just based on coursework. While that appealed to my laziness, I suspected that a thesis degree would carry more weight with potential employers. Now that I’ve finished my job interview circuit, I still can’t say for sure whether more opportunities have been open to me because I’m doing a thesis, but I like to think so. :) There had better be some payoff at the end of this mess! In any case, it’ll be nice to be “published,” I guess. Bonus if my advisor and I can put together a conference or journal paper afterward.

~~~

I was washing my hands in the bathroom after lunch today, along with this woman who’s in there practically every afternoon re-applying her makeup. She looked at me and said, “Are you a student here?” I smiled and said yes. “Okay,” she continued. “I looked at you and thought to myself, ‘she can’t be old enough to work here!’” Apparently I’m 25 going on 12.

Josh and I celebrated our two year anniversary this past weekend. We didn’t actually do much since I'm still frantically writing my thesis, but it was really nice to just spend some time together since we haven’t seen each other in a while.

Speaking of the thesis, it looks like this might actually happen—I might actually graduate on time. I was really worried for a long time that I’d have to stay here for the summer, after everyone else had left. It’s still going to be tough to finish everything in the next three weeks, but I think it’s do-able. It helps that my officemate is in the same boat, so we’ve been able to commiserate on our behind-schedule-ness.

About a week and a half ago, the weather here started to get really nice. I walked to work everyday, amazed that the sun still actually existed. The only problem was that it was also pretty windy, which created some problems for my eyes. Because (watch out, armchair ophthalmologist diagnosis coming...) my corneas were damaged from being irritated for such a long time and are only now slowly getting better, my eyes still dry out very easily in the wind. I noticed that my eyes were itchy and red after my mom and I spent a weekend at the Cape last September (windy), this whole mess started when Lauren and I were tramping around England for a week last spring (windy), and my eyes were itchy and dry after ice skating for a day with some girls from work a couple months ago (also windy, although some may have been self-generated).

A few days ago though, I realized that even though this whole eye ordeal has really sucked, this was probably the best time for it to happen. I’ve been so busy with school this past year that even if my eyes were cooperating, I haven’t had time to do a lot of outdoor stuff where I just couldn’t wear glasses. Plus, I haven’t had to drive on a regular basis in grad school, where wearing my glasses definitely cuts down on my peripheral vision.

Pronunciation

I just finished reading The Bookseller of Kabul last week (which I highly recommend), but I can’t tell anyone about it because I don’t really know how to pronounce “Kabul.” Is it KAH-bul? Ka-BUHL? I googled it this morning and found this fantastic article about more problems than just pronouncing the name of Afghanistan’s capital. And according to the author, the jury’s still out on the official English pronunciation of “Kabul.”

A reason to appreciate growing up as a Yankee

Seen this afternoon on CNN:

Students attend first integrated prom

At first I couldn’t figure out what “integrated” was supposed to mean. Then I thought, that couldn’t mean what I think it means... could it?

Students of Turner County High School started what they hope will become a new tradition: Black and white students attended the prom together for the first time on Saturday.

Whoa. Does this really still happen in 2007?

Adkinson’s sister, Mindy Bryan, attended a segregated prom in 2001.

“There was not anybody that I can remember that was black,” she said. “The white people have theirs, and the black people have theirs. It’s nothing racial at all.”

My jaw dropped as I kept reading.

Nichols said while her parents were in support of the integrated prom, some of her friends weren’t allowed to go.

“I’ve asked, ‘Why can’t you come?’ and they’re like, ‘My mommy and daddy—they don’t agree with being with the colored people,’ which I think is crazy,” she said.

Do people really still say “colored”? I understand that racism in America hasn’t gone away, but I never realized that we still have such a long way to go.

Kevin Spacey closes the bridge

On Saturday, I found out that the bridge I normally cross to get to work every day was going to be closed on Sunday so that it could be used to shoot scenes for an upcoming movie. The movie is “21,” and it’s based on the true story of MIT students who made millions of dollars by counting cards playing blackjack in Las Vegas. There’s already a book about these kids calling Bringing Down the House, which I highly recommend if you haven’t read it.

Anyway, I had heard that the bridge would be open between takes for pedestrians and cyclists, so I decided to take my chances. When I got to the bridge though, police weren’t letting anyone across. I guess Kevin Spacey has a little more clout with the city of Boston than I do. And I was bummed that didn’t even get to see anyone famous!

The bridge reopened by the time the Yankees-Red Sox game got underway last night. The game must have been pretty intense because I could hear the crowd cheering at Fenway Park around midnight last night, all the way from my apartment in Kenmore Square. I don’t miss all the loud drunks by 4 am, but living down the street from Fenway Park is pretty cool. I’m definitely going to miss Boston.

The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlamp of an oncoming train

My, my... it’s been a while. Things are crazy busy here, so there hasn’t been much time for other things besides sleep, food, and thesis. Several weeks ago, my advisor told me that he didn’t think I’d be able to graduate on time because I kept having setbacks with the algorithm I’m developing. It seemed like each day I’d come into work, having runs several simulations overnight, and there’d be some case where my algorithm burped on something that I hadn’t anticipated. So, I’d spend most of the day fixing it and then I’d run some more cases overnight, and then something different would be wrong the next morning. This went on and on until it was way past the point that I needed to actually start writing.

Which brings us to now. I’ve fixed most of the major things, so my algorithm is giving much better results, although it still has some minor problems. But my advisor agreed when I told him (adamantly) that I wanted to graduate this spring. The problem is that this leaves me with basically three weeks to write my entire thesis and run all the sims I need to collect my data. To this end, I’ve been spending almost every waking hour in front of a computer. The last thing I feel like doing when I get home is spending more time in front of a computer, blogging.

Anyway. As part of my post-thesis life, about a month ago I accepted the Virginia job. I’m really excited about the work, although I have some reservations about the company as a whole, so I’m not sure how long I'll stay. It was a really tough decision, but in the end, what made my decision was the fact that I thought if I took the Maryland job, I’d always wonder about the work at the Virginia job, and I didn’t think that would happen the other way around. We’ll see, I guess. I’m definitely looking forward to working with some old friends, and I’m excited about moving back to DC. I love DC. Not to mention that my favorite person in the whole world will be mere miles away, rather than a whole plane ride away. :)

In typical procrastination fashion, I’ve already spent too much time online looking for apartments and cars when I should be writing my thesis. There are so many decisions to make! I can’t decide if I want to live by myself or with roommates, closer to DC or closer to work, buy a new car or a used car... The smart thing to do, I know, is live close to work, get a roommate, and buy a used car. Ugh. But the thing is, I’ve never lived on my own before. I’ve lived with my parents, shared some dorm rooms, and shared many apartments. I also know that at some point, Josh and I will move in together, so is this my only chance to live by myself? However, if I’m not actually going to be spending much time there, then it would be a lot cheaper to have a roommate.

And then there’s the city. Downtown DC is about 30 miles away from where I’ll be working. I don’t want to live downtown (couldn’t afford it and not crazy about the crime...), but it would be fun to live in Arlington or Falls Church. The drive isn’t terrible because I’d be reverse-commuting from the typical burbs-to-city folk, but I also don’t want to waste 1-2 hours per day sitting in my car. But living near the city would be a lot more fun than living in the suburbs... I have my entire life to live in the burbs. However, if I lived closer to work, I could bike to work when the weather’s decent, which would be really cool. If I go the roommate route, the rent would be about the same for either area. If I wanted to get my own apartment, cost would be more of a discriminator, I think.

I’ve almost managed to convince myself that if I “settle” for living closer to work, I can splurge by getting my own apartment and buying a new car. Not sure that’s a fair “trade,” but that’s what I’m thinking...