A quiet break

I've been at home in Virginia the past couple weeks. Resting, mostly. With the Singapore trip coming up, I don't feel obligated to go out and Do Things while I'm here, so I've spent more time just sitting around than I have in a while. And it's been nice.

I did go out and see people a couple times. I went into TJ the Wednesday before Christmas, for the alumni reception. It's the first time since I graduated that it's been after MIT got out, so I thought I'd stop by and see who would show up. Unsurprisingly, the majority of people there were from the past couple years, but I did see three other people from my year. And of course I went and visited teachers up and down the Math hall (and ran into a bunch of other mostly-MIT people doing the same thing).

Chirstmas came and went, with my big presents being a new battery for my laptop (30-45 minutes with the old one just wasn't enough) and a set of Knuth's Art of Computer Programming.

I got down to the Corcoran Gallery in D.C. to see their Gehry exhibit. He's designing their new wing (due in 2009), so they put on an exhibit of other museums he's designed. They all looked basically the same as Stata--big shiny jumbled wavy silver shapes. But I still kind of like that look, and it was interesting to see all of the models together.

Today, I went and visited some friends living in D.C. and lost at Illuminatti, again.

I actually got a lot of work done here too, in small fragments at a time. I finished off the LSC job descriptions I started revising in May, just in time for my term to end on December 31. There was also time for a few small fixes to jCilk, but nothing substantial. And I, um, looked at the HMMT registration software...

But mostly, I rested. Read a lot, played with the new iPod that Google sent me, watched some movies on tape. And slept. I feel better than I have in a while, and I'm motivated to go get some work done over the next few weeks. We'll see how long that lasts.