Life Update

Winter Break in New England

Winter break kicked off with a lovely visit from Chelsea. After I worked my final day of 2025, we went to Noodles and got cookies from Hungry Ghost Bread. Then we played Dutch Blitz and every time someone won a round, they got to take a bite of a cookie. The following morning, we rose early to partake in the last day of Tunic's scavenger hunt. We did not think we had any hope of winning, but at 8am sharp we refreshed the Instagram page and the clue led us behind the outdoor trash can, where we saw no other seekers. It seems that the only other people looking were at the indoor trash can (amateurs), so we got a big box of prizes. Then we did crosswords at Tunic while we waited for Hungry Ghost Bread to open for the last time under this ownership, where we waited for an hour and I got a loaf while Chelsea got stickers.

I brought the aforementioned loaf of bread to the Christmas celebration on my mom's side, which was a bit abbreviated this year because my grandparents just moved from Mount Desert Island to Waterville so most of their stuff is in boxes, and my uncle was supposed to host but his condo flooded two days prior so he had to emergency move all his stuff into storage, so it was a brief and small Christmas but nice to get together with everyone.

Then my dad and I continued north to Mount Desert Island, where my parents now own my grandparents' former house. We vacuumed and scrubbed every inch of the house, which was a lot of work but very satisfying. I fear that my lack of desire to furnish new places may run in the family; the living room is empty and the dining room table was eventually upgraded from a cooler to a folding table (for now). We also spent some time in Acadia. My dad and I went for a run around Witch Hole and a hike up Beech Mountain and Beech Cliffs. I also ran up Cadillac Mountain for sunrise because the road is closed in the winter, so my claim to fame for the next year will be that I was the first person to see in the sun rise in the United States after the winter solstice.

It snowed about eight inches on the day that we were supposed to drive to Framingham to celebrate Christmas with my dad's side of the family, so we left a day early and got a hotel in Freeport to avoid some of the snow. The following morning, we stopped at the L.L. Bean outlet and continued south. I played Minecraft with my cousins and then we played the large roster of games that my grandmother planned and then had Chinese takeout. Since I was sleeping over ahead of my flight to Wenatchee to visit my brother, I was unable to avoid going to church for the Christmas Eve service.

Winter Break in Washington

Matthew starts work at an ungodly hour when he has to do the snow report, so I opted not to go with him to take his car the first day I arrived. I had a chill day of reading, working, and catching up on Stranger Things and went for a run around his neighborhood. He lives on an outcrop across the valley from the mountain where Mission Ridge is, so my run had very good views. Last year, cloud cover obscured the top of the mountains the entire time I was here, so I appreciated the views across the valley.

The next day I ran down the mountain into town and then took the Ski Link bus up to the mountain so I would not be trapped at his house. After he finished work, we got dinner and beers in town.

On the days his snow reporters (one of whom is an Olympic silver medalist?) worked, I went up to the mountain and took his car. I went to a cafe with a great view of the mountains and finished my last grad school application. Then I hiked to Saddle Rock and then continued up into the mountains, though the view didn't change much. I also ran the Apple Capital loop, which goes a couple miles along each side of the Columbia River in Wenatchee and East Wenatchee.

He had Monday off, so we drove to Grand Coulee, which is a cool geological formation that formed when the ice dam of glacial Lake Hitchcock failed during the Ice Age, creating a flood with greater flow than all of the rivers in the world today. This created steep cliffs as the waterfall eroded its way upstream. This landscape was the first place where geologic principle of uniformitarianism was debunked. We were originally drawn to the area by a cave that is in the shape of a rhino because a rhino died and then a basalt flow molded around it and was later uncovered by the flood, but we aborted this mission when there seemed to be a moderate risk of falling off a cliff into the lake on our way to the rhino cave. In consolate, we climbed some random escarpments and then ran down the closed road to another lake, where we began a hike to some giant potholes that were once at the base of the waterfall.

On the last day, we drove toward the Enchantments and hiked Icicle Ridge in the morning, which had some nice views. After, we went to the Bavarian village of Leavenworth to walk around the shops, admire the holiday lights, and eat pretzels, beer, and ice cream. Overall, it was a successful trip and always good to catch up with my brother.

Work

I returned to work in January and was immediately confronted with giving a presentation to a lab group at the University of Toronto over Zoom. I was severely stressed about the presentation for days, but it ended up being less formal than I was expecting and I would almost say that I had a little bit of fun. I was really sweaty while I was presenting, but during the questions part I got into some interesting discussions and got some good suggestions for future work so overall it wasn't as painful as I'd been expecting.

I am writing two papers for the RE@Next conference, which are both due in early March. One is about the findings of the BloomingLeaf methodology study that we ran in the fall and the other is about the code review behavior study we did in the fall. I've had the tedious task of looking through screen recordings of code reviews from the fall and aligning the timestamps, which is mindless but also sometimes difficult.

Jessica and Molly have been in, and we are getting to new parts of development that very clearly link to the work I did for my thesis, which is exciting. Venturing into new territory also means getting stuck more, which can be frustrating. A new member is also considering joining the lab, so we've been explaining to her what we're up to.

Weekends

The first weekend when I returned from Washington, I severly needed time to chill at home. I read a lot and took advantage of having free time in the middle of the day to run in the daylight. My parents visited since I didn't go to Connecticut over break, and we went to Noodles and Herrell's and they also gave me a bunch of stuff to bring up to the Maine house.

Last weekend, I went to New Jersey to visit Annie. Highlights included Lucy's basketball game, ice cream at Owowcow, a cat cafe, playing imposter with Annie's parents, brunch with Annie's friends, and George Washington's lookout over the Delaware River.

Annie and I are currently in Maine for the long weekend. Yesterday morning, we walked at Wonderland and the Bass Harbor lighthouse while it was was lightly snowing. In the afternoon, we did a puzzle and made popovers.

Leaks

The first leak that happened was from the ceiling in lab, so the extent of my responsibility was to stick a bucket under it, remove the nearby electronic equipment, and call facilities. It was dealt with by the time I came in the next day.

Less than a week later, I woke up in my apartment thinking it was raining pretty hard. As I became more aware of my surroundings, I realized that there was sunlight streaming in through the windows and I became suspicious of the sound. Upon investigation, there was a steady gush of water coming out of two light fixtures in my kitchen closet and it sounded like the people who live upstairs were running water above it. I texted them, and they had somehow not realized that their toilet was running, so I can only assume that their bathroom floor was also flooded. They shut off the water while I used all my towels to mop up the large puddles, and then they brought me more towels, a fan, and a dehumidifier so we left those for a couple of days and it seems to be no worse for wear, except the need for a new light fixture. The only things destroyed in the flood were some crafts and mementos from conferences.

The third leak was predicted. My parents don't want to keep my grandparents' backup freezer in use in the Maine house, so I was tasked with unplugging the freezer and babysitting it as it thawed to absorb the puddles that dripped out of mysterious locations along the door. I am unsure of why so much water was frozen into the door, but I spent yesterday afternoon attempting to dry towels at a faster rate than they got soaked from the drip.

New Year's Resolutions

I think New Year's resolutions are kind of silly but I nonetheless vaguely made with three:

1. have more physical contact with friends
2. call my family members for non-administrative reasons
3. return to journaling

So far I would say that I have made no progress on the first one (although to be fair most of my friends are not here). I have established a weekly call with my brother in which we do the Saturday NYT crossword together, so that is progress, and I tend to see my parents relatively often anyway since we live in the same time zone. Finally, I have successfully restarted journaling every night before bed (and have also started reading a poem each night as a bonus, though this is unrelated to the resolution).

The Future

I have been verbally told by a professor at the University of Toronto that she issued me an offer of admission into their PhD program for next fall. Though I will not truly relax until I receive the formal email from the department, I am starting to believe in the possibility that I will go to grad school next year!