i have been accepted to grad school.
in fact, multiple ones; happy sarah is happy!

i don’t feel like logging what’s been going on since the last update.  instead i want to talk about field camp:

it was awesome.  i wish i could go back to sleeping outside, worrying about kangaroo rats with cute beady eyes getting into my warm sleeping bag, and seeing the milky way right before i go to sleep.  the rocks were pretty amazing too.  i can’t wait to go back to do field work, wherever that may be, in whatever fashion i can find.  if nothing else, i need to do something fun and awesome for the summer.  perhaps a road trip?   

my last mit semester starts in two days!   

oh, and here is the desktop picture. sorta new. ish. not that new. but still cool.

i have been listening to the beatles basically non-stop for the past week or so.  they make me wish i was born around 40 years earlier.

shin splints suck. so do side stitches/running cramps.

the summertime is wonderful.  the esplanade is a cascade of locals at 6:30pm every weekday.

when i just said ‘wonderful’, i really meant it. i am sometimes actually full of wonder. this is turning out to be a decidedly good summer for wonder.

parties are fun. so are fireworks and the 4th of july in boston. however, these sorts of items are becoming a little mundane/repetitive.

it is time for a change. (yea, obama) time is approaching to decide what form that change will take. how drastic it might be. to be completely blunt: time is actually approaching to decide what i will do in a year.

i am not looking forward to the upcoming school year. i am, however, looking forward to cookie hour in 25 minutes.  i am also looking forward to attempting to surprise my parents with a visit this weekend.

i kind of want to do something completely spontaneous. sometime. don’t know what form that will take. on a note that honestly may or may not be completely unrelated, i am starting to really think i would like to take a trip to europe after i graduate.

time for an update:

1. term is over. one more year. i really do look forward to ending MIT. sorry all you MIT fans, but it would be nice to … enjoy life again. things that this implies that i am not looking forward to: GRE, applying to jobs/grad schools, another full year of school here, the winter… oh well.

2. by some stroke of unforseen good luck, i became the coxswain for the MIT Lightweight Men’s Varsity 8 at the IRA this spring. i learned a lot through it, and it was relatively fun, though short. it was almost enough to make me sure that i would actually want to cox next year instead of row. gahhhhh. it feels like so recently that it was last summer and i was still unsure of what i was going to be doing crew-wise in the upcoming year. well, i am there again. dunno. just that simple.

3. i got a UROP for the summer (that will extend hopefully into my senior thesis in the fall) with lindy elkins-tanton in course 12. i get to modify a model code for a theoretical type of exoplanet - a hot earth, which is a planet that is approximately earth-sized orbiting really close to its star in tidal lock. the coding will all be in fortran, i have learned recently, so i guess i gotta start learning that now. heh. i’m kinda excited about it. it is also really flexible, and if i wanted to i could probably just work from home all the time. plus, cookie hour is every day at 3pm, so i am psyched to capitalize on that one too.

4. i might get to go on the DEAPS program again this year (went my frosh year, soph year, didn’t have it at all last year…) as a student leader. instead of going to yellowstone this year they’re going to colorado to look at fossils and stuff. it sounds really fun. camping, etc

5. i got the summer ra position for ec this summer. not a whole lot to say there… just is.

6. finishing raffi’s mural is my preferred form of procrastination right now. that and mario kart wii.

7. my family moved a week ago back to atlanta from chicago. i am psyched about this because whenever i make it to visit home i might actually see people from high school for the first time in 3 full years. i don’t miss them that much or anything, but it would be nice to have people around that i know when i go home those one or two weeks out of the year. plus, atlanta suburbs >>>> chicago suburbs. just saying.

8. so far i have been too lazy to start that super-awesome summer working out thing. i set the alarm clock today for 7am, and i wasn’t even tired (i woke up naturally actually at like 6:30) but literally was so lazy that i convinced myself somehow that i could really use another hour or so of sleep instead and rolled over and went back to sleep. i then showed up at 9:30 for work. *shrug* oops.

yea. so that is my life right now in a point-by-point nutshell.

i hope it stays warm. and i miss all the many people that left

3 final papers (one a little overdue. *shrug*)3 final examsthen, friday of finals week i leave for a vacation to florida to visit my sister at my aunt and uncle’s house. the closer this becomes to reality, the more excited and antsy i am gettingin other news, eastern sprints is next weekend.  i haven’t been to worchester in a long time now, but that race is like a holy race to me.  somewhere between the hype we had our freshman year (best race of my life i think) and the current seniors on the lwt men’s team’s goals for it, i really get nervous about this race.  our 8 could really do well here this year, but alas, i am not going to be in it.  my four has two seniors in it and i really hope we can get to have a good, positive time, practice a 2,000m piece with navy, and overall watch some exciting racing on sunday.  i guess that is all i can hope for this year.  the more and more this year turns out to be something more laid back, hands off, out of my control, the more i remember how much fun rowing is.  the lwt women should be a lot faster than they seem to be doing (story of that program’s life?).  i am thinking that, though it is far too late for this year, if i decided to row next year we’d have enough sticking around, etc to continue to hope for speed.  zomg! maybe i’ll get to be in the head of the charles for once.  basically i don’t know what i would do if i did crew at mit for my undergraduate career and sat on the sidelines all four years.  that would pretty much suck. i’ve done a lot of sitting on the sidelines, i guess. i shouldn’t dwell here on crew too much.  i only have one more year after this next week and a half.  i can’t wait till the week and a half is over.  i wonder where i’ll be in 15 months from now?  i sort of feel like doing something completely different in my life after MIT.  i’m tired. a little cranky, anxious, nervous, and in desperate need of a rest, plus some time spent lounging around and playing mario kart wii some more.  that would be nice.  my dream picture right now: me sitting comfortably on a sofa, playing a projected mario kart wii game in a dark room with a wide open side of it facing the ocean, letting the breeze, mist, and watch crashing sounds meet the mario shouts and excitement. yea. just so you know where my state of mind is… (lala land) 

well, a friend from high school is coming to visit me tomorrow.  she arrives in the evening, will stay through sunday, except spending shabbat at our high school teacher (who moved a year or so ago to boston), Rabbi Baker’s house in Brookline.  erm, she keeps kosher and all that. i have no idea how i am actually going to feed us.  and i am also a little apprehensive about the fact that EC + CPW might kinda freak her out a little. i dunno. maybe i should give her a little more of a benefit of the doubt. 

also worth mentioning, my crew team (that i have joined again since the last post. heh.) has our first race this weekend against yale and georgetown.  i’ll be in the lightweight varsity 4+ race which goes first thing in the morning (probably before 7am) so don’t come watch.  plus it looks like it is gonna be raining and cold.  and we’re only racing georgetown. *sigh* crew not only could get its own post, but it deserves (and has!) its own blog, so this is all i am going to say about it here. 

lastly, i have been procrastinating writing this history paper. i hate history papers. at least with literature papers i feel even remotely interested. i don’t give a flying fuck about the communist manifesto. i wish i did. then this paper would have been done by the due date… 5 days ago. 

 so the last hurrah before trying to complete it is post to the ol’ blog the new desktop that i am putting up now. in commemoration of my daily hope for springtime weather.  this was taken by me on the very last day of florida crew training in cocoa beach back in january.  i was sipping starbucks, taking a few last pictures, and soaking my feet in the ocean right then. <3 

From Paradise Lost by John Milton - Book VII, Lines 557 - 581 

Up he rode,
Follow'd with acclamation, and the sound
Symphonious of ten thousand harps that tun'd
Angelic harmonies: the earth, the air
Resounded (thou remeber'st, for thou heard'st)
The heavens, and all the constellations rung,
The planets in their stations list'ning stood,
While the bright pomp ascended jubliant.
Open, ye everlasting gates, they sung,
Open, ye heavens, your living doors, let in
The great Creator from his work retun'd
Magnificent, his six days work, a world;
Open, and henceforth oft; for God will deign
To visit oft the dwellings of just men
Delighted, and with frequent intercourse
Thither will send his winged messengers
On errands of supernal grace.  So sung
The glorious train ascending: He through heaven,
That open'd wide her blazing portals, led
To God's eternal house direct the way,
A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold
And pavement stars, as stars to thee appear,
Seen in the galaxy, that milky way
Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest
Powder'd with stars.  

today it got above 60 degrees in boston. to commemorate, i went to revere beach for the first time.  i took some pictures. i liked this one… and made it my new desktop.  in other news, i seriously love the “across the universe” soundtrack (and listened to it the whole way to, from, and while walking upon revere beach).  i also seriously think the guy that plays max, joe anderson, is wayyyyyyy hotter than the guy that plays jude.  but, i guess, i’d take either - except i suppose it doesn’t work that way. 

i have a lot of work to do now. oh, in commemoration of that, i changed the theme to the blag. in case… i (you?) didn’t notice or something. 

you can’t just leave it behind somewhere when you leave; all of you is in there. you can’t really do a whole lot for a long period of time without it.  every now and then you realize you need something from in one of your bags and you just got open it all up, dig around for a while, find stuff you weren’t looking for, get side-tracked, and occasionally, you find what it was you were originally looking for.   

sometimes you get really fucking tired of lugging it all around everywhere you wanna fucking go. sometimes it is a real pain in the ass… sometimes you forget you’re even carrying it around and you just walk around with this load without really paying it any attention.  but then, when you don’t keep track of it on a regular basis, but you just keep adding more and more stuff slowly to it, it can get a little unwieldy.  you really get slowed down.  you really just inch along, collecting more and more because you notice more and more when you’re going slower.  its a feedback loop.  

one day when i am not so lazy i’ll go through and sort it all out. i’ll make piles, take an inventory.  i’ll open every bag, inspect every bit, and i will fold it all back up neatly and organized.  of course, we all know that when we live out of suitcases we just get things messier and messier the longer we do it, but really, what choice do we have in the end?


time for some particulars? fine.i really liked the two movies i saw most recently: juno and the blood diamond.  they reminded me of stuff at the bottom of suitcases that i haven’t opened since i closed them what’s scarily going onto decades ago now.  totally different bags, but bags i don’t keep regular track of nonetheless.

i wish i was able to think more clearly. instead as i grow older things ironically get cloudier and blurrier. wtf.  what a fuckup i am sometimes. oh well. i’ll add that in there too. i’ll get around to it sooner or later.

sometimes it is not so much the oh-so-common “i hate my life” as much as “i hate myself”. they’re different. grumble grumble. that is all for now.