Life Update

Work

We had the final push to submit the journal paper for November 22nd. I spent several midnights in a row going slightly crazy in Ford and had many spontaneous Zoom calls with our collaborator in Georgia to argue about linear temporal logic but I'm fairly satisfied with how the paper turned out in the end, and it was a big relief to submit it.

We are finally running the study with the eye tracker, which had to be done this semester because the participants were from our special studies. It ended up being rushed so I don't think we are going to end up using these results, but working with the eye tracker on a larger scale did allow me to work some problems out, so hopefully we will be more prepared next time. This meant that I had a bunch of 45-minute meetings scattered throughout the day for the past two weeks which has not been ideal for productivity on other projects.

During finals week, Alicia also had me sitting in on some of the mock interviews for Algorithms, and watching these poor people have to write code live on the whiteboard really brought back the stress from doing it myself two years ago.

In terms of development, the pipeline was not working for a while and we eventually figured out that it was because Smith got a new firewall that was blocking some of our requests, but now that we have sorted that out I am back to always having a rough estimate of when the pipeline will finish as I plan out my day.

Tomorrow is my last day of work for two weeks, and I am definitely ready for (mostly) a break.

Weekends

Sky, Mather, Annie, and I went to a llama farm in Florence that was having an open farm day. We met llamas named Mo and Simba, as well as many Angora rabbits that they also trim for fur. Then we were in a festive mood so we took our obligatory trip to the Yankee Candle village. I've made it a goal of mine to become a candle person so I got a small Kitchen Spice one and a large Catching Rays one and finally bought a lighter.

The next day, I ran the Hot Chocolate Run with Mather, Sky, Anna, and Soph. I had forgotten how fun it was to run with friends but I felt electrified. My knees don't particularly like the cold though.

Last weekend, I went to watch my cousins in the Nutcracker at Mass Ballet in Framingham. Then I got lunch with my parents and grandparents. My grandma pulled out a big box of old thank you notes, terribly misspelled stories, and bad drawings that I apparently made as a child that she saved. She also gave me a bedframe, but without the horizontal slats needs to actually support the mattress, so my dad and I are planning a minor construction project in January in order to get my mattress off the floor.

Thanksgiving Break

I kicked off break by getting ramen and Mochinut with Alexa, Aranza, and Avery when Alexa came to pick them up for Thanksgiving break. It felt strange to be talking about high school people in Northampton but was really fun to catch up.

Chelsea and Katie visited the day before Thanksgiving and we went to the Florence Pie Bar and played board games. On Thanksgiving morning, Katie and I went for a run. Then my chocolate mousse pie and I went to my aunt's house. My grandmother brought a pickleball net and insisted that we use a measuring tape to chalk regulation lines, even though the driveway was quite sloped and uneven. My cousins' other grandfather and I beat my cousin and my grandmother. Then I jumped rope with the girl cousins for a little bit. After dinner, Andrew, my uncle, and I played a card game that mimics an escape room but we did not escape within the time limit. I greatly enjoy the fact that my cousins are now old enough to actually do fun activities and joke around with when the adults are being silly.

After Thanksgiving, I went home and hung out with my cats. On Friday, Annie came to tour Salem. We went to the Mystic Aquarium, got me new running shoes in Olde Mystick Village, and tried free samples at Sticky Situations. Then we walked the Niantic boardwalk and did a mini tour of East Lyme. On Saturday, we stopped at Salem School, did the brief driving tour, and went for a walk at Walden Preserve.

Then we drove up to Carlisle, picked up Sky, and went to Riley's apartment for a lovely Smith soccer alum reunion where we ate tacos and played board games. On Sunday we did a Carlisle tour and I briefly stopped by George's house and met their cats. Then we went to the Snowport in Boston, walked around a bit, and acquired some free mac and cheese. We also went to Bartaco. Everyone needs to move back to Northampton because I miss hanging out.